


woken from the dream (by my own name)

by opendoor



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2010, 2011, AU, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, Canon Elements, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Smut, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 01:49:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11071518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opendoor/pseuds/opendoor
Summary: A tale as old as time- Dan and Phil meet online and fall in love. Except this time they have superpowers, and the world needs saving.Now complete!





	1. Chapter 1

Dan Howell didn’t run. There were several reasons for this. The first was that he was horrifically unfit, and running for more than three minutes at a time tended to leave him feeling close-to-death.  
  
The second reason was that his hair required a truly ungodly amount of product in order to stay flat and straight. An unwanted side effect of this was that it couldn’t weather more than a gentle breeze without sticking up like the back of a hedgehog. It was altogether safer, Dan thought, to remain relatively still.

The third reason Dan didn’t run, was running required a degree of caring that he generally didn’t have. There wasn’t anything in his life he wasn’t willing to miss.

It was the first Tuesday of November, and the morning was as cold and grey as one would expect from Manchester. Dan had picked up a coffee on the way to his business law lecture, and as a consequence was running five minutes late.

A group of construction workers were re-tiling the roof of an administration building, tossing tools back and forth. Dan watched them as he walked past, until the sight of them, perched on the rooftop five stories up, brought memories he’d tried to forget dangerously close to the surface.

He put his head down, and kept walking. By the time he reached the lecture theatre, everyone had already gone inside.

The double doors to the theatre were closed. Dan felt the old anxiety stirring in his gut. He may have made no effort to arrive on time, but the idea of entering the room late, of everyone turning around and staring at him, filled him with a paralysing fear.

_What if he tripped on the way in? What if it wasn’t even his class in there? What if the lecturer yelled at him?_

He could already feel his palms starting to sweat. He was edging closer to the door, when someone pushed past him and continued into the room, as though it were as easy as breathing. Dan forced himself to follow in their wake.

_Used to be a damn superhero_ , he thought to himself bitterly, as he took a seat near the back of the room. _Almost defeated by my own nerves._

_***_

Fiduciary relationships, Dan thought sagely, were boring.  
He had been in class twenty minutes, and he was already regretting his decision to attend. He was taking in about one in four sentences the lecturer was saying, and his coffee was nothing more than a fond memory. Dan had his laptop out, ostensibly to take notes. In reality he was flicking between four different social media websites.

He had just hopped from Twitter to Tumblr, when he felt it; the familiar pang of dread, deep in his chest.

_Fucking fantastic_ , was the last thought he had before his vision faded to black.  
  
_The lecture theatre was gone, and there was nothing between Dan and the grey Manchester sky, only he couldn’t feel the chill._

_He was up on the roof, looking at the group of tilers, no, at one of them in particular, a man in his thirties with short blond hair and a beard._

_The man was crouched on the rooftop, but as Dan watched, he got to his feet and took a step. Too quickly, too violently; with a crack, a tile gave way under his over-eager foot. The man’s ankle twisted unnaturally, and then he was falling, sliding down the shingles, his fingers scrabbling for purchase as he neared the edge of the roof._

_And then, just when Dan thought he was going to have to watch him plummet to his death, he managed to catch hold of another shingle, and slow his fall._

_He came to a halt less than three feet from the edge of the roof._  
  
_The other tilers hurried over, to see if he was alright. The man grunted that he was, but Dan could tell that his ankle was paining him from the grimace on his face._  
  
And then suddenly Dan was back in the business law lecture theatre.

His visions weren’t particularly noticeable from the outside; he just went still and unresponsive for a few minutes. He couldn’t see anyone eyeing him weirdly, so it looked like nobody had tried to speak him while he was gone. Good.

Dan had experienced visions of danger since he was thirteen years old. There seemed to be a geographical limit on the ability-he rarely witnessed events more than ten miles away, and a temporal limit- he rarely saw things more than a few days in advance.

The back of Dan’s neck was prickling slightly; he knew that what he had seen was going to come to pass in a matter of minutes.

There had been a time, less than a year ago, when Dan would have acted on his vision. He would have run across campus, his non-running policy be damned. He would have yelled at the tiler to watch what he was doing, even if it made him look crazy. He would have climbed the scaffolding up to the rooftop himself, if that’s what it took.

But those days were gone.

A broken ankle was nothing, Dan reasoned to himself. People broke bones all the time. He ignored the guilt stirring in his chest, and turned his attention back to Tumblr.

Walking back to Halls half an hour later, Dan was greeted by the sight of an ambulance and a fire truck parked outside of the administration building. He couldn’t help but feel this was a little excessive, but he supposed that the other tilers had needed help getting the man down to the ground. The blond man was sitting on a stretcher, talking to a paramedic, and looking somewhat sheepish.

Dan almost expected the man to recognise him, as he walked past, _Hey, you’re the kid who was supposed to save me_ , but, of course he didn’t.

When Dan got back to his room, he texted the guys from his floor, asking if they wanted to go out that night, before crawling into bed for a nap. This was, really, the only appropriate way to deal with nine AM classes.  
  
***  
  
Dan did go out that night, and had something resembling a good time.

However, the incident with the tiler must have affected him more than he had realised, because, when he let himself back into his dorm-room at one in the morning, still slightly drunk, he found himself logging into _fortressofsolidarity.com_ , for the first time in almost a year.

_A support group for people with powers_ , read the lettering underneath the site logo, which was a silhouette of a woman with wings. In Dan’s experience, super-powers were rarely that liberating.

Dan clicked onto the main thread. The sight of the clunky, black interface was soothing in its familiarity. Dan had spent years lurking here as a teenager.

The content of the website didn’t seem to have changed much. Clicking through the past three pages, Dan saw a mixture of ethical debates, discussion of abilities, and pleas for advice or support.

One woman was debating informing her new employer that she was slightly magnetic.

_You’re going to have to_ , someone had replied. _That doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you could hide for long._

_True,_ the original poster had typed. _but if I tell him he could sack me on the spot._

This was true. It wasn’t illegal to have powers in the UK, but it was illegal to use them. The law failed to factor into account that many people, Dan included, had absolutely no control over their powers.

Dan felt the old prickle of outrage in his gut. It was a weakness of his, this over-active sense of injustice. It was this very trait that had led him to don a mask and gallivant around Manchester in the dead of night, fighting crime. _And that had turned out so well for him._

This wasn’t his life anymore. He was at University (sort of) studying law, he had a bunch of perfectly normal friends, and the last thing he needed was to be sucked back into _this._ He went to close the browser, then paused when a line caught his eye.

_Normalness leads to sadness._

For some reason, the words made Dan’s heart skip a beat. He was so used to seeing talk about the downsides of having powers; the persecution and the inconveniences (despite its branding, _Fortressofsolidarity_ tended to be quite a cynical place), that he had almost forgotten that having powers could be a pretty awesome thing.

Dan scrolled up to see the line in the context of conversation.  
It was part of a response to another post. Dan read that first.

_Hi. First-time poster yada yada. I’m 14 and the other day I was swimming in the school pool when I realised I could kinda…breathe underwater. Actually there’s no kinda about it. I can breathe underwater. Thankfully nobody at school noticed me doing it. I told my parents, and they were supportive, but they told me not to do it again.  Swimming without coming up for air was great. This is going to sound stupid, but I felt like a mermaid. But I’m super scared of getting caught. And I’m in school, I want to fit in. I don’t want to have this thing dividing me from everyone else. I just want to be normal._  
_So, I guess I’m asking for advice. Should I just never do it again?_  
_Edit: I don’t have gills, thank God._

The next post contained the line which had captured Dan’s attention.

_First of all, hi! It’s great that your parents were so accepting, and maybe in time you can tell some trusted friends too._  
_That doesn’t sound stupid at all. As long as you’re careful, there’s no reason why you can’t use your powers in private. I wouldn’t recommend using the school pool again, though, that sounds risky._  
_Lastly, remember, powers are nothing to be ashamed of. Why worry about being normal, when you could be yourself instead? Normalness leads to sadness._  
_Best of luck!_

Reading the post had a dual effect on Dan. Half of him wanted to roll his eyes, and half of him wanted to find whoever had written it and give them a hug. He clicked onto the profile of the poster, who was apparently called _Snowdude87_. He was about to judge the screen-name, when he remembered that his own login was _danisnotonfire_.

Dan looked through a few (a lot) of _Snowdude87_ ’s previous posts. The posts didn’t contain the user’s real name, because _fortressofsolidarity_ was anonymous by necessity. However, Dan still learned that the guy could produce and control ice with his hands, which wasn’t especially shocking, given his username. More surprisingly, he found out that Snowdude’s family knew he had powers and were cool with it. He also found out that _Snowdude87_ was probably the kindest and most upbeat person that had ever existed.

Dan went back to Snowdude’s profile, hovered the cursor over the button PM User, and let the alcohol still buzzing in his blood spur him into clicking.

He spent a good five minutes labouring over his first message, which eventually, rather underwhelmingly, read:

**i saw some of your posts and i just wanted to say hi**

A reply came within two minutes; _Snowdude87_ must have already been online. **Hi! It’s always great to meet new people!**

**so, ice powers. that’s pretty cool**

Dan sent the message, and then upon reading it back smacked himself on the forehead. Could he _be_ any lamer, the guy was clearly never going to… the whooshing notification of an incoming message interrupted his train of thought.

**Thanks! What can u do? Let me guess, something to do with fire?**

Dan stared at the message in incomprehension for a few seconds, before he remembered his username.

**i wish haha. nope i get visions. of things that are about to happen.**

**Bummer. Fire and ice would have been poetic. Must be awesome seeing the future tho.**

**not really. i only see bad things. and i can’t control when the visions come. they’re kind of debilitating.**

**That sounds rough** **:(** came Snowdude’s reply.

**dw im being overdramatic** _,_ Dan typed quickly. **had a vision during a lecture today though. i completely spaced out. thankfully nobody noticed.** Dan took the ‘87’ from Snowdude’s username and did some mental maths _._ **r u at uni?**

**Graduated from York 2 years ago. What uni r u at?**

This was quickly followed up by a second message. **You don’t have to answer that, if you don’t want to.**

**no its fine. manchester**

**I LIVE IN MANCHESTER TOO!  
…sorry for the all-caps, I just got excited.** **^_^**

Dan couldn’t deny that he felt a little jolt of happiness at the knowledge that Snowdude lived near him, which was bizarre. For all he knew, the guy could be a sixty-three year old catfish who really lived in Eastern Europe.

**My name’s Phil, btw.** The message came in before Dan had started his reply. **I’m guessing ur name is Dan, otherwise ur username makes no sense at all.**

**yupp i’m dan. nice to meet u, phil**

**Nice to meet u too, Dan.**  
  
***  
  
Over the next few weeks, Dan and Phil kept talking, first over forum messaging, then over Facebook, and finally over Skype.

Dan was relieved to find that Phil wasn’t a catfish; he was in fact a horrendously cute twenty-three year old, with blue eyes, and great hair and okay, maybe Dan had a little crush.

The crush wasn’t purely based on the physical. Conversation with Phil flowed in the way that conversations rarely did for Dan. They could, and did, talk for hours, without ever running out of things to say. Though they did speak about their powers, it wasn’t the only topic of conversation. They had a lot of shared interests; they both loved the band Muse, and spent far too much time playing video games.

Dan liked to think that the crush wasn’t one-sided. Phil had made clear both that he was single and that he was interested in boys, and some of the things he said to Dan seemed decidedly more-than-friendly.

There was one hitch in this early stage in their relationship; Phil refused to tell Dan what his job was. Dan, as a result, had come to the conclusion that Phil was either a secret agent or a porn-star. Not that he seemed well-suited for either of those careers. Dan cornered Phil about it during one of their more epically long Skype chats.

“Will you tell me about your job already?”  
  
Phil, who had been lounging on his bed, straightened slightly. “I don’t see why it matters.”  
  
Dan shamelessly made puppy-dog eyes at him. “I really want to know,” he said.  
  
Phil looked at Dan for a moment, and then caved. “Fine,” he said. “I’m…I’m a Youtuber. I make Youtube videos.”  
  
Dan blinked. Of all the possibilities he had entertained, he hadn’t expected that.  
  
“You can live off that?” he blurted.  
  
Thankfully, Phil didn’t seem to be offended. “If you have enough subscribers you can start a partnership with Youtube.”  
  
“What’s your channel name?” Dan demanded. “I want to check you out.”  
  
“AmazingPhil,” Phil replied. Dan wasn’t certain, but it looked like he was blushing slightly.  
  
Dan searched for Phil’s channel, had a small heart attack when he saw the number of subscribers, and clicked on his most recent video. As he watched, a grin grew on his face.  
  
When he clicked back to the Skype window, Phil was watching him from between his fingers.  
  
“Phil,” Dan said. “That was _brilliant_.”  
  
Phil let his hand slide away.  
  
“I didn’t want to tell you what I did. I was worried you’d think it was silly, or something.”  
  
“Well, it is kind of silly,” Dan said, fairly. “But that’s the point, really, isn’t it.”  
  
And at that, Phil grinned too.  
  
***  
  
Dan now had a new pastime: watching Phil’s videos. He did it when he was procrastinating working on assignments and when he was waiting for Phil to come online; he even watched a few during his law lectures, with his headphones carefully plugged in.

And the videos were nothing compared to the actual Phil, who seemed to be as enamoured with Dan as Dan was with him. They had started outright flirting, and the other day Phil had offhandedly used the phrase “when we meet in person”. When Dan needed distracting from the brutal reality of his law course, he thought of Phil. Of course, this meant that he was spending a lot of time spaced out and smiling.  
  
Hazel, a girl from one of his law seminars who he was friendly with, asked him about it at the end of class. “Dan, you do you and all, but how come you’ve suddenly started smiling? It’s kind of disconcerting.”  
  
Dan thought about it. “I’m like, slightly in love,” he said, trying out the words.  
  
Hazel looked bemused at that. “Well, hope it works out for you,” she said.  
  
And that was that.  
  
***  
  
“Look what I’ve got!” Phil cried, as soon as Dan logged onto Skype on Saturday night. He held up two clasped hands.  
  
“Er, what do you have?” Dan asked.  
  
In answer, Phil opened his hands. Resting in his palms was a sculpture, around two inches tall, and made of ice. Phil held the sculpture closer to the camera, so that Dan could see the shape properly.  
  
“Is that, is that a _Pikachu_?” Dan demanded, voice rising in pitch as he realised what he was looking at.

Phil pulled the tiny Pikachu back from the camera, and nodded his head excitedly.  
  
“Nerd,” Dan said. “Is it going to melt?”  
  
“Not while I’m holding it,” Phil said.  
  
They didn’t talk about their powers much anymore, despite them being the thing that initially brought them together. Dan suspected that Phil wanted to bring the topic up more often, but didn’t on account of Dan’s reticence.  
  
“Do you make stuff like that a lot?” Dan asked.  
  
Phil shook his head. “Takes a lot of concentrating. And they don’t last long once I put them down.”

To demonstrate his point, he set the Pikachu down in one of the many empty glasses that always littered his bedside table.

Dan was watching its ears start to melt when Phil said, sounding nervous, “Dan, I was wondering, do you, erm, do you want to meet?”  
  
Dan snapped to attention. “Yes!” he said, far too quickly, and loudly.  
  
Phil laughed.    
  
“Good,” he said. “That’s good.”  
  
***  
  
They arranged to meet at eleven on Monday, in the Starbucks near Piccadilly Station.

When Dan walked in at five to eleven, Phil was already there, sitting at a table in the corner. He had been watching the door, and he stood up when Dan approached.

“Hi,” he said, voice sounding deeper and richer than it had over Dan’s tinny laptop speakers.  
  
“Hi,” Dan echoed, acutely aware that he had no idea what to say next.  
  
Thankfully it turned out he didn’t have to say anything, because the next second, Phil was pulling him in for a hug. They were almost exactly the same height, and Dan’s chin rested on Phil’s shoulder like it belonged there.  
  
“I like you better when you’re not made of pixels,” Phil said, when he finally stepped back.  
  
“Me too. Like you. Better-” Dan gave up on the sentence.  
  
Phil giggled at him.  
  
“Shut up,” Dan said, rolling his eyes. “We should order.”  
  
Two caramel macchiatos later they stepped out onto the street, to, in Phil’s words “explore” the city, (“We both live here, Phil,” Dan had said, rolling his eyes).

They set off together down the pavement, easily falling into stride beside each other, pointing out their favourite places as they passed them.

Outside it was, of course, utterly freezing. Dan had opted not to wear anything over his hoodie, because his coat was bulky, and he’d wanted to look nice for his date, but he was coming to regret the decision.

“Really?” Phil said, when Dan pointed out the Apple store.  
  
“A store full of Apple products, and free wi-fi, what more could-” Dan shivered, and broke off, mid-sentence.

“Are you cold?” Phil asked. Before Dan could reply he was shrugging off his coat.  
  
“No, Phil, you don’t have to-” Dan protested.  
  
“I barely feel the cold,” Phil said, holding out the coat.  
  
Dan eyed him suspiciously. “You’re not just saying that to be nice, are you?”  
  
“No, actually, it’s a perk of my-” he wiggled his fingers, “ice powers.”

Dan slipped Phil’s coat on over his own hoodie.

“Thanks,” he said.

As they walked, Dan kept sneaking glances at Phil. It was thrilling, seeing him outside the confines of his laptop screen; noticing the sharp lines of his shoulders under his t-shirt and the way his pale skin seemed to gleam in the harsh winter light.

About the sixth time he looked over, Phil caught his gaze and held it. There was a challenge in his eyes. Dan understood what he meant. It was Phil who had suggested they meet, Phil who had hugged him first. The next step was Dan’s to take.

Dan quickly looked around. They had wandered off the main streets. There weren’t many people around, and none of them looked particularly awful, so Dan leaned in, and kissed Phil.

The kiss started out gentle; Phil’s lips were soft and pliant against his own. Then Dan nipped at Phil’s lip, and the kiss deepened, tongue finding tongue. Dan was dimly aware of reaching out to cup Phil’s jaw, and of Phil’s hand coming to rest on his shoulder.

“Wow,” Phil breathed, as they slowly disentangled from each other. He stepped back, but only part of the way. He was still close enough that Dan could make out three different colours in his eyes. “Would you, maybe, like to come back to mine?” As he spoke, he tugged idly on the collar of Dan’s shirt.

“I’ll have to think about it,” Dan deadpanned.  
  
***  
  
Phil’s apartment was high up; fourteen floors up to be precise.

Dan wasn’t embarrassed to admit that the first thing he did upon walking through the door, while Phil turned on the heating, was rush to the window. Manchester stretched out before him, a seemingly endless expanse of tall buildings and grey sky.

“It’s prettier at night,” Phil said, moving to stand by his side. “When it all lights up.”

“Mm,” Dan agreed. The sight of the city from above was one of the things he missed most about his time as a superhero.

“Pretty,” Phil repeated.

Dan glanced over, and realised that Phil wasn’t looking at the view; he was looking at him, which was inexcusably sappy really, but still gave him a tingly feeling in his chest. Dan leaned into Phil and kissed him again, a kiss that seemed to start where the last one left off. His hand had just found the hem of Phil’s shirt, when Phil drew back.

“Now might be a good time to mention that the people in the neighbouring buildings can see us,” he said.

“Ah,” Dan said. “Bedroom?”

“Bedroom,” Phil agreed.  
  
Phil led Dan through his apartment, which, even though it was small, was still many times bigger than Dan’s dorm-room.  
  
“Ta da,” Phil said, when they stepped into his room, which, Dan noted, was suspiciously tidier than it had appeared during their Skype chats, and in the videos he had seen.  
  
“Did you tidy up for me?” he asked.  
  
“No,” Phil spluttered. “I mean, yes, I thought, just in case you wanted to come back…”  
  
Dan stopped his babbling with another kiss, a hungry, forceful kiss. This time, there was no reason to for it to be cut short. After maybe a minute, Phil made a low moan in his throat, and pulled Dan’s hips closer to his own. Dan set about removing the layers of clothing that separated them. He shrugged off his borrowed coat, dropping it unceremoniously on the floor. His hoodie and their shirts received the same treatment.  
  
Phil reached out and traced one of Dan’s collarbones. His fingers were surprisingly cool; Dan gasped when they brushed against his skin.  
  
“I know,” Phil apologised. “My hands are always cold. It’s a downside of the ice powers.”  
  
He ran a hand down Dan’s chest, toward the waistband of his jeans, and Dan shuddered for an entirely other reason than the cold. “S’alright,” he said, thickly. “S’nice.”

They shucked off their jeans; it wasn’t sexy, but Dan comforted himself with the fact that they both looked as stupid as each other. Then he took Phil’s hands, and flopped back on the bed, pulling Phil down ontop of him in the process. Given that they were both clumsy, six-foot-something guys, this went about as well as could be expected; Dan somehow managed to cop an elbow to the ribs, which launched him into a fit of giggling. He was still laughing when Phil brought their lips together again, though he stopped, when Phil’s mouth moved to his neck, pressing a trail of open-mouthed kisses.

Dan let out a noise that was less of a moan, and more of a whine.

Phil responded by moving down even further, and sucking on the skin where Dan’s neck met his shoulder. Dan squirmed underneath him.

“Sensitive,” Phil murmured, though whether he was talking to Dan, or himself, Dan wasn’t sure. To be honest, he wasn’t sure if Phil knew; Dan was hard in his boxers, and he could feel that Phil was the same.

Phil moved away from Dan’s neck, and Dan moaned at the loss of contact. Phil moved down his body, pressing one last kiss just below his navel, as he eased off Dan’s boxers. Then his mouth was on him, warm and wet, and Dan lost the capacity for lucid thought entirely.

The world seemed to fall away. There was just Phil’s mouth, working up and down, as Dan got closer and closer to-  
“Phil,” Dan said in warning.

Phil pulled back, and jerked Dan off for the last few strokes, until Dan came, gasping, in his hands.

It was a while until Dan’s brain started working again, but when it did he gave Phil what he was sure was a very dopey smile, before rolling over and pushing him on his back to return the favour.

When it was over, and they were cuddling together under the covers, Dan took Phil’s hands and rested them against his own chest, until they started to warm.  
  
***  
  
Dan didn’t stay the night, but they did whittle away the afternoon playing video games on Phil’s sofa. When he walked back to his room in the late afternoon, he did it with a spring in his step so pronounced that several people from his floor gave him a double take.

That night, while he was sleeping, Dan had a vision.

_He was outside, on a street he recognised. A man was staggering down the pavement. He was clearly very, very drunk. At one point he almost fell, catching himself on a lamp post at the last moment._  
_He laughed a delighted drunken laugh._  
  
_The man reached the end of the pavement, only he didn’t seem to notice. Dan watched, horrified, as he stepped out, right into the path of a taxi._  
  
_There was the screech of brakes, then an awful crunch._

_The last thing Dan saw before he woke up was blood mixing with the rain running into the gutters._

He started awake, flung himself out of bed, and set about trying to find some clothes. He might have given up on the superhero gig, but he couldn’t just _let_ someone die.

The road from the vision was only a ten minute walk from Uni. Dan’s visions didn’t come with a timestamp (that would have been too convenient) but he did usually have a sense about when they were going to come to pass. He was certain that the collision was going to happen at some point that night, and given that it was approaching 4am, there wasn’t all that much of the night left.

He picked up the hoodie he had taken off a few hours before, and put it on, pulling the hood down so it covered his eyes. Then, as an after-thought, he put his coat on over the top. It was freezing out, and this time he had no Phil to come to the rescue.

There were still people hanging in the lounge at the end of the floor. That was the thing about Uni living, there were always people _around_. Some of them called out his name as he passed. Dan pretended not to hear them, which honestly, he might have done even if he didn’t have somewhere to be.

When he reached the strip of pavement from his vision, the man was nowhere in sight. Resolving to wait for him, Dan leaned against a nearby wall, and jammed his hands into his pockets.  
  
He was starting to get genuinely impatient (why hadn’t he thought to take his phone), and cold, by the time the man careened around the corner. Dan watched as he zig-zagged down the street, stumbling next to the lamp-post.

He decided to try a friendly approach first. He pushed off the wall, and stepped into the man’s path.

“Er, you doing okay there?” he asked.

The man glared at him with unfocused eyes. “Piss off,” he said, shouldering past him.

_Nevermind._

Dan started following him. “Seriously, dude, you might want to slow down there, be mindful of your surroundings, you know.”

The man turned around, suddenly. “I thought I told you to piss off,” he said, loudly.

“I’m just trying to be helpf-” Dan started, but then broke off, when the man tried to punch him in the face. Tried, being the operative word. The man was so hopelessly drunk that his fist merely whooshed through the air somewhat near Dan’s face.

Unfortunately, the momentum from his failed punch disrupted the man’s already tenuous balance. He nearly fell forward into Dan, but at the last second tumbled back, off the side of the of the pavement and onto the road. Dan grabbed him and dragged him back, just as the taxi came sailing past, perilously close to both of their noses. They both watched as it disappeared up the street. Then, Dan let go of the man, and the man stopped trying to deck him, which Dan appreciated.

The man’s eyes had gone very, very wide. Dan wondered if the incident had shocked him sober. He wasn’t sticking around to find out.

“Be careful getting home,” he muttered.

By the time the guy stuttered out a “Thanks, mate”, Dan was already walking away, with his head down.

 

The people in the lounge were still there when Dan re-entered his building, though a few of them seemed to have fallen asleep where they were sitting.

He let himself back into his room, before shrugging off his clothes and crawling back into bed, all without turning the light on. He was exhausted, but he knew that sleep was futile. Adrenaline was spiking through his blood. It was a long time since he’d done something like that.

He checked his phone. There was a new text from Phil, sent a few hours previously.

**Going to bed, and i know we only technically met a few hours ago, but i miss you** **< 3**

Dan sent back a **miss u too** , even though he knew Phil was long asleep.

He drew the covers over his head, and scrolled back through the conversation with Phil, until he felt himself start to calm down.  
  
***  
  
A few days later Dan was back at Phil’s. They were making out, half-naked on his bed, when Phil asked, “Hey Dan, what’s this?” and tapped the silvery scar on the back of Dan’s thigh, about the size and shape of a fifty pence piece.

Dan felt his body stiffen. He fought to keep his voice, at least, casual. “It’s a burn. From when I was a child,” he lied. “Not a very interesting story.”

And then he kissed Phil again, to stop him asking any more questions.  
  
***  
  
December passed in a haze of happiness. It was Dan and Phil curled up together in Phil’s bedroom, going out to the movies or for dinner when they could afford it.

It was Dan going to a house party to meet Phil’s friends, and actually making a good impression. It was Phil’s hand resting on the small of his back, keeping him grounded the whole night. It was Phil nuzzling Dan’s shoulder on the way back, clearly pleased with him, and talking about introducing him to his parents and brother.

It was Phil’s face when Dan gave him his Christmas presents and the Tonberry plushie Phil had given Dan.

It was calling Phil, when they were both at their parents’ houses, after Christmas dinner, and listening to him ramble about his relatives, who all sounded as weird as he was.

It was kissing at midnight on New Year’s, and later that night, it was Phil stroking Dan’s hair, and planting a kiss on his temple, when he thought he was asleep.  
  
***  
  
“I’m going to film a video today,” Phil said.

Or at least, that’s what Dan thought he’d said. The words had been a little difficult to make out, as Phil had spoken them lying face-down in bed, with his head smushed into his pillow.

It was the first week of January, just after ten in the morning, and Dan was leaning against the headboard, scrolling Twitter. “Okay,” he said, lightly. He had been in Phil’s flat whilst Phil had filmed videos before, and it wasn’t too bad. He just had to remember to keep quiet, and not walk through the back of the shot.

Phil rolled over. The creases of the pillow had left red lines on his face. He looked up at Dan with sleepy eyes. “Can’t be fun for you, sitting around while I’m filming.”

Dan shrugged. The alternative was going to back to his dorm-room, and Dan had been neglecting his studies so much recently that stepping foot on campus made him feel guilty.

“You know me,” he said. “As long as I have my laptop and an Internet connection, I’m okay.” He took Phil’s hand, and began to play with his fingers. “Obviously it’s not ideal,” he added, in a low voice, “Because I’d prefer to be spending time with you, but I’ll survive.”

Phil studied Dan for a second, chewing his lip. “You should be in the video,” he said.

Dan rolled his eyes. “No, I really shouldn’t,” he said.

Phil propped himself up on his elbows. “Why not?” he demanded.

Dan removed his hand from Phil’s. “Because I’ll cock it up, and then you won’t want to hurt my feelings, so you’ll upload it anyway, and then all your fans will hate you.”

Phil laughed. “How exactly does one cock up a Youtube video?”

“I don’t know,” Dan said darkly. “But I’m sure I’ll figure out a way to do it.”

“You shouldn’t talk yourself down so much,” Phil persisted. “I think you’d be great on camera.”

This was something it had taken Dan a while to learn about Phil, he could be stubborn when he wanted to be. Dan fidgeted with the edge of the duvet. “This is your thing, you’re good at it. I’ve got the charisma of a cabbage that’s been left out in the rain.”  
  
Phil laughed again. “See, that was funny. You’re funny, Dan.”

“Barely.”

“And good-looking.”

“Now you’re just trying to flatter me so I agree to be in the video.”

Phil stared at him, totally unabashed. “Did it work?” he asked.

Dan kicked back the covers. “Let’s get this over with,” he said.  
  
***  
  
Ten minutes into filming, Phil attacked Dan’s face with a sharpie.

“What are you doing!” Dan cried.

“Drawing cat whiskers,” Phil said, matter-of-factly, “Stay still.”

Reasoning that his face was already ruined, Dan did as he was told. Phil sniggered at his disgruntled expression.

“Welcome to Youtube,” he said.  
  
***  
  
The next night, Dan went out with his friends from Uni, who he had been ignoring almost as much as his classes, while Phil stayed at the flat to finish editing their video.

At about half-past ten, Dan received a text from him.

**Finished editing. Want 2 look at the finished product before i upload?**

**no** , Dan texted back. **i trust u**

It was true, Dan did trust Phil’s judgement, but the fact was, he couldn’t face watching back the video. Though he’d felt good about it immediately after filming, the more hours that passed the more uncertain he grew. What if he’d been too loud, or cringy, or just desperately unfunny?

He slid his phone back into his pocket and headed over to the bar to drown his sorrows.  
  
***  
  
Dan was woken by his phone vibrating next to his head. He sleepily held it to his ear.

“Hullo?”

“Dan, Dan, Dan,” Phil jabbered excitedly.

“What?” Dan, said, a little bluntly. A dull pain was emanating from the middle of his skull, a souvenir from the previous night’s drinking.

“The video went live last night.”

“Oh yeah,” Dan said, feeling around his bedside table until his hand closed around a glass of water. “How did it do?”

“Amazing,” Phil said. Dan could tell from his voice that he was beaming. “It already has more views than anything I posted in December.”

Dan, who had been attempting to pour water into his mouth without sitting up, froze.

“Seriously? What about the comments?”

“They were nice.” Phil paused. “OK, I won’t lie, this is Youtube after all, but _most_ of them were nice. The people liked you, Dan.”

“Hang on,” Dan said, opening the video on his phone. “Ooh, someone said I’m cute.”

“Yeah, I’d say at least forty percent of the people who commented want to sleep with you.”

Dan made a face. “Only forty percent?” He scrolled further down the comments. “It looks like the other sixty percent want us to have sex. Which you know, we do.”

They had decided not to let on to Phil’s many, many viewers that they were dating.

“We do that, yeah,” Phil agreed. “ _So_ ,” he said, significantly.

“So what?” Dan said.

“The video went down well,” Phil said. He sounded uncharacteristically sly.

“I suppose you could say that, yeah,” Dan agreed, cautiously.

“And everyone adored you.”

“Not everyone,” Dan said, matter-of-factly. “Someone wrote “go die emo twat”. Someone else said that my hair looks shit, which I think hurts me more.”

Phil ignored him. “Your Youtube debut was a success. You didn’t _cock it up_.”

Dan suddenly realised what Phil was up to. “I see what you’re doing here! You just want to make me admit that the video went well, even though I thought it was going to tank.”

Phil giggled mischievously. “It’s true though, I was right. Come on, admit it.”

Dan gritted his teeth. “I don’t know if I can do that, Phil.”

“Go on, say it. I was right, and you were wrong.”

“No!”  
  
“I had a good idea, and you know it.”

There was a pause.

“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” Dan conceded.

Phil laughed in triumph.

“You’re a loser,” Dan informed him. Then, “I’m coming over later.”

***

“Do you ever feel guilty?”

It was a few days before Phil’s twenty-fourth birthday, and they were sat side by side on his couch using their laptops in what had been companionable silence.

“Guilty about what?” Dan asked, only half paying attention.

When Phil replied, his voice was solemn. “Having the powers we do, and not using them to help people.”

Dan closed the article he was reading, and swallowed. This was exactly the conversation he didn’t want to have with Phil. “Can’t say I do,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

Phil swivelled his laptop to face Dan. On the screen was an image of a dark-haired woman in a cape, hovering several feet off the ground. “A new superhero has started up in the US. People are calling her Superwoman.”

“That’s creative,” Dan said, rolling his eyes.

“Apparently today she saved five people from a hostage situation. She’s doing some real good, Dan.”

“Good for her,” Dan said, turning back to his computer screen, and hoping, fervently, that this would be the end of the conversation. For a glorious moment, he thought that it was.

Then he heard Phil take in a breath. “I thought, maybe I could give it a go. Helping people. Being a superhero.”

“No!” Dan exclaimed, before he could stop himself.

A crease appeared between Phil’s eyebrows.

“Why not?” he asked, sounding hurt.

“Because it’s dangerous! You could get beaten up or arrested, or straight up murdered.”

“I know that, Dan,” Phil said, softly. “But I want to do it anyway. I want to be brave.”

Dan pushed his laptop aside and stood up.

“How are you going to help people, Phil? I have _seen_ you literally fall over putting socks on.”

Phil stood up too. “I’m powerful, Dan. I can do more things than even you know.”

Dan held up his hands. “Okay, okay, you’re powerful. But that doesn’t mean you have to do this. They reckon what, one in ten thousand people have powers? If every person who had powers was a superhero, the Earth would be flooded with them. But it isn’t, because most of us are perfectly happy living out normal lives.”

Phil pointed to his laptop. “She’s not the only one doing it. Do you remember that guy in Manchester everyone was talking about last year, the Night Terror? He dressed all in black, and he had some kind of combat power, people theorised, because he never lost a fight.”

Dan focused on sounding casual. “Yeah, but he gave up the gig. And the police were hunting his ass by the end. Clearly it didn’t work out for him.”

“Which means there’s an opening. Manchester needs someone to do its superhero-ing, now the Night Terror’s gone.”

Dan laughed. It sounded jagged to his own ears.

“Can you just listen to yourself. Superhero-ing? You sound ridiculous.”

Phil blinked. “I-I want to do this, Dan,” he said.

Dan took a deep breath. He couldn’t have what had happened to him happen to Phil. He needed to make sure that Phil didn’t go ahead with this. He reached deep down inside himself, and pulled out the words that would hurt the most.

“This isn’t about you wanting to help people, Phil, this is about you wanting to make yourself feel better.”

“And why would I need to feel better, Dan?” Phil asked. His voice was tight.  
  
“Because you have no idea what you’re doing with your life!” Dan exploded. “All of your friends are using their degrees and starting careers. What are you doing? Putting crappy videos on the Internet! You feel inadequate compared to the people around you, your friends, your _brother_ , and instead of actually dealing with that, you want to, what, play at being a superhero? Grow up, Phil.”

Half-way through speaking, Dan had realised that there was no coming back from this.

Phil didn’t shout back, he just stared at Dan. He looked absolutely crushed. Dan thought he could see the beginnings of tears glistening in his eyes.

“Phil,” Dan started, weakly.

“Get out,” Phil said, his voice shaking.

And that was that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did say there'd be angst.  
> But there's still a lot of story to go :)
> 
> If you liked this a comment or kudos would be really appreciated.  
> 


	2. Chapter 2

The week following his break-up with Phil was rough.

Dan emailed in sick to his classes, and spent the first few days holed up in his room, listening to the same sad album over and over, and ignoring the friends who occasionally rapped on his door.

On the fifth day, he finally ventured out of his room for longer than the time it took to procure food or use the bathroom. Laptop clutched to his chest, he stationed himself in the lounge at the end of his floor, glowering at anyone who appeared to be happy, because he was nineteen and heartbroken.

On the sixth day, he went out with his Uni friends and got hammered.

Several rounds in, Jack Howard, who lived down the hall from Dan, made the fateful mistake of asking him, “What’s up?”.

“Everything’s gone to shit,” Dan mumbled, to the table, which was spinning. “That’s what’s up.”

Jack laughed. “What are you on about?”

“He hates me. He hates me now.”

“Who does?”

Dan turned his focus from the table to Jack, who was spinning too.

“Phil!” he said, wretchedly. “He hates me. You should have seen his face, when I left. I hurt him, Jack, I hurt him, really badly. And I didn’t mean any of the things I said, I just wanted to protect him, and I guess I did that, but I just…I just miss him, you know? I miss him.”

Jack waited politely for Dan to finish before asking, “Who’s Phil?”

And then Dan remembered that he hadn’t mentioned Phil to Jack before, hell, he hadn’t even come out to him.

“Nevermind,” he mumbled, downing the rest of his drink.  
  
***  
  
Dan attended his seminars the following week, because technically they were compulsory, and he had already skipped a few back when he was seeing Phil.

“Judging by the fact you looked like someone kicked your puppy, I’m guessing the love thing didn’t work out,” Hazel said, after his first class back.

Dan grunted.

“Too bad,” Hazel said. “But I bet you could do with some company. I’m having some people over mine, tonight. You should come.”

And before Dan could say no, she had strode off.  
  
***  
  
Hazel lived in the building next to Dan’s. Around eight that night, Dan walked up to the room number she had texted him, and knocked on the door. His hands were sweating. He had no idea what to expect, how many people would be there, what sort of people Hazel was friends with. He wondered if he should have brought something.

“Come in,” called a voice that wasn’t Hazel’s.

Dan gulped, and pushed open the door. It was a single room, but it was much larger than Dan’s. Dan let himself feel a stab of envy for everyone living in the building, before focusing on what was in the room.

Inside were Hazel, and perhaps five other people. Everyone was holding a bottle of beer, and three people in the corner were playing a heated game of Mario Kart. All in all, it wasn’t the most intimidating scene, especially when a brown-haired guy with a beard turned around and said to Dan, “Hey, we have a spare controller, do you want to join in?”

Dan had a surprisingly good night. He beat everyone at Mario Kart, repeatedly, until they told him he wasn’t allowed to play anymore, chugged a beer in less than a minute, and had a far too in-depth conversation about Glee with a dark-haired girl called Dodie.

At the end of the night, though, all Dan wanted to do was call Phil and tell him all about it.  
  
***  
  
Dan started spending more time with Hazel and her friends. Often after class, he and a rotating cast of the others would take their laptops and hang out in Hazel’s spacious room after class.

Over time Dan gave his new friends an outline of what had happened between him and Phil, leaving out all mention of super-powers, because there was opening up, and then there was stupid.

“You should just call him,” Dodie said, after he had relayed to her the edited version of their break-up.

Dan shook his head. “He doesn’t want to hear from me. And it’s for the best. Honestly.”

In his peripheral vision, he saw Hazel roll her eyes.

Gradually, though, Dan was starting to feel a little better. The urge to ring Phil had lessened; he found himself itching to call him only three or four times a day, instead of every waking moment, which was progress.

At one point he did check to see if Phil had taken their video down. He hadn’t. Dan forced himself to close the window before he watched it and set himself back two weeks.

Dan might have continued on this slow path to getting over Phil, if the guy hadn’t insisted on being so immeasurably _stupid_.

Around six weeks after the breakup, Dan was lounging on the futon at the side of Hazel’s room, with Dodie, and the bearded guy, whose name was Tom.

It was already dark out, but Hazel was yet to make the impatient noise in her throat which meant that she wanted everyone to leave.

Dan was queueing up posts on his tumblr, when he stumbled upon a post with 6000 notes, entitled NEW HERO IN MANCHESTER!!!

Dan felt the moisture leave his mouth. He hurriedly scrolled down to read the post.

_The media hasn’t reported on this because the police want to keep it secret, but two days ago, two guys broke into my Uncle’s hardware store, just outside the city centre. They smashed the front window, but they didn’t take anything, because a superhero arrived, and stopped them. My Dad and Uncle got alerted when the thieves tripped the alarm, and they came as fast as they could. They didn’t see the fight, but they saw the aftermath. One of the thieves was trapped in a block of ice (he was okay, it melted pretty quick) the other guy was passed out on the floor. He woke up after the police arrived, and he said the superhero knocked him out with some kind of ice-weapon. Anyway, that’s my story. The proof is below._

And sure enough, underneath the block of text, was a photograph of a guy standing in a hardware store, encased in a layer of ice. The image would have been comical in any other context.

“No, no, he didn’t, the son of a bitch,” Dan said, out loud.

“What’s going on?” asked Tom, leaning over to look at his screen.

“Nothing,” Dan said, snapping his laptop closed.

“Doesn’t sound like nothing,” Hazel remarked, but Dan was already shoving his computer into his bag and heading out the door.  
  
***  
  
He burst back into his own room several minutes later. Locking the door behind him, he flung the wardrobe doors open and dropped to his knees. He located his least favourite pair of shoes, tipped the left one upside down, and shook it. A small silver key fell onto the carpet.

Dan palmed it, and then dragged his big, green suitcase out from under his bed, and opened it. Inside was a smaller, sleeker suitcase of black and silver. Hands shaking ever so slightly, Dan slid the tiny key into the lock, and opened this second suitcase.

Inside was the costume Dan used to wear when he was the Night Terror. Dan hesitated for only a second, before removing it from the case.

The Night Terror costume, was, there was no other word for it, magnificent.

Dan hadn’t made it himself; he lacked all of the skills necessary to do that. Louise, a mysterious woman that Dan had met through _fortressofsolidarity_ , had made it for him.

When Dan had first come to Louise, he had requested that the suit be covered with zips. Louise had firmly refused: “If I put zips all over it, you’re going to look like a gimp”.

The suit was plain black, fitted, but not too tight. Dan wasn’t sure what it was made of- some kind of blend. The fabric was soft against his skin, but tough enough to greatly lessen the impact of a punch. Dan wasn’t convinced that Louise didn’t have a super-power of her own. There were boots, gloves, a hood, but no cape. On the front, two silver zips cut diagonal lines from shoulder to chest, Louise’s small concession.

Dan was relieved to find that it still fit. He had grown in the previous year.

He took a second to admire himself in the mirror (because Phil might have been out endangering himself, but he, Dan, was still vain), before taking the last item out of the suitcase: his mask, which was a combination of a helmet and a visor. Dan slipped it on.

He went to the window of his dorm, and wrenched it open. He gracelessly clambered out, dangled from the window ledge, and dropped to the ground outside. The impact jarred his legs. God, he was rusty.

Dan had no solid plan, he intended to spend the night roaming the back streets of Manchester, and hoping to have a vision. It stood to reason that if Phil was the new protector of Manchester, Dan could expect to find him at a crime-scene.  
  
Dan had two visions that night, of street fights, but, to his disappointment, Phil wasn’t in them. He hoisted himself back through his dorm room window in the early hours of the morning, defeated. Not many people had seen him. His suit had a tendency to blend into shadows (Dan was serious in his suspicions that Louise had powers), but a few people’s eyes had lingered.

Over the next few days, Dan found more stories online about Phil, or The Blizzard, as people had started to call him, doing heroic, hideously dangerous things. He had saved a teenager from assault, stopped a woman being mugged, returned a lost dog...okay, Dan wasn’t sure how one used ice powers to find a dog, but couldn’t really fault him for that one. The media still weren’t reporting on him, which meant that the cops were suppressing the story, which made Dan very nervous indeed.

He was starting to think that Manchester was simply too big, and that he was never going to find Phil, when, around eleven on his third night of searching, he had a vision.  
  
_He was a dark city park, and three boys in their late teens were shoving a fourth, younger boy between them, in a demented game of throw and catch._

_The younger boy tried to break free, but two of the others caught hold of him, pinning his arms._

_The third boy approached him. “Fucking queer,” he said, and spat in his face._

_“Cut it out,” came a voice, firm and familiar._

_Dan turned around to see Phil standing in the boys’ path._

_Or rather, The Blizzard, as Phil was wearing a (it must be said, quite hideous) turquoise costume, complete with a cheap-looking visor, and a short cape._

_“And what the fuck are you supposed to be?” asked the boy who had spat._

_“A superhero,” Phil said. “I would’ve thought that was obvious. Now, let him go.”_

_“Or what?” the boy sneered._

_“Or I make you,” Phil said, simply._

_The boy started toward Phil. With an idle flick of his wrist, Phil coated the grass beneath his feet with a thin layer of ice. The boy slipped, and fell, hard._

_When he got up, he was bleeding profusely from the nose._

_“You freak,” he growled, swinging at Phil wildly. Phil managed to dodge the punch and pressed a two fingers against the boy’s forehead._

_The boy went very still. Dan watched as his teeth clenched, and the veins in his temple bulged. His skin started to go blue. Finally, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he sunk to the ground. This time he didn’t get up._

_Phil shifted his focus to the other two, who wordlessly released the younger boy, and sprinted away._  
  
And then suddenly, Dan was staring at the ceiling in his dorm room. As he lay there, he remembered what Phil had said to him, the day they broke up. “I’m powerful, Dan. I can do more things than even you know.”

“You weren’t joking, Phil,” he muttered, out loud.

Dan didn’t know what Phil had done to the boy in the vision, but he was sure that it wasn’t fatal, because he knew Phil.

Or did he? Phil had seemed different in the vision; louder, and more self-assured. He had even looked different. In the vision Phil had stood tall, with his shoulders’ squared; in real life, his posture was _appalling_.

One thing was for sure, Phil didn’t need Dan to look out for him. He would be fine on his own.

And, with that thought, Dan rolled over and tried to get back to sleep.  
  
***  
  
The next day Dan felt utterly directionless, to the point that, in the afternoon, he called Hazel, and asked her if she wanted to study.

It took him three minutes to convince her that he wasn’t joking. Hazel still sounded a little unsettled when she suggested that they meet in the library at eight.

Dan arrived at the library a few minutes early. While he waited for Hazel, he picked out a table, and cracked open his law textbook. It still smelt new.

Hazel burst into the library fifteen minutes after they were supposed to meet. Her cheeks were flushed from running, and she was sweating.

“Hi Dan!” she exclaimed, spotting him. “So sorry I’m-” A girl sitting nearby shot her a dirty look, and she lowered her voice. “Sorry I’m late.”

“What’ve you been up to?” Dan asked, as she sat down, more amused than annoyed.

“I…um, well if you must know, I just came here from a date.” Immediately after speaking, Hazel shot Dan an anxious look, as though worried that the mere mention of dating might make him burst into tears. Dan couldn’t deny that he felt a stab of envy at her words, but he pushed it down quickly, and plastered a smile on his face.

 “Who with?” he asked.

“Jack Howard,” Hazel said casually, as she took her studying supplies out of her bag.

“Jack Howard!” Dan repeated, incredulous.

“Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” Hazel said, eyes flashing dangerously.

Dan was suddenly reminded that Hazel was a terrifying human being. “Nothing,” he back-tracked, before deciding to commit. “It’s just, he’s a bit of a knob, Hazel.”

For a moment, Dan thought Hazel was about to beat him to death with her law textbook. Then she grinned.

“He is, kind of. But I like him.” Then she asked the dreaded question. “How are things going for you in the romance department?”

Dan was spared from answering by a vision.  
  
_He was standing underneath an overpass, and all around him, men were fighting._

_Dan hastily extricated himself from the fray. Since he wasn’t truly present in his vision, there was nothing to stop other people passing through him, which was an extremely unsettling experience._

_There were perhaps fifteen men in all. Dan assumed they were in two gangs, though from where he was standing, it looked like everyone was clobbering everyone._

_They were fighting dirty, kicking and biting. One man was brandishing what looked like a piece of piping._

_Dan heard footsteps behind him, and turned to see Phil, in his full Blizzard get-up, running toward the men, looking determined._

_Phil held out his hand, fingers splayed. An icy wind howled through the air, knocking every man off his feet. The wind still roared, even after they fell, keeping them down. Phil walked closer, his hand still raised, until he was standing in the middle of the men._

_“In five seconds, I’m going to let you up. You can either come at me, or you can leave. I hope you make the right decision. Five, four-”_

_Then Dan saw something that sent him into a panic. Directly behind Phil, one of the men was struggling to his feet. Dan saw that it was the man with the piece of piping._

_“three, two-”_

_The man clocked Phil on the back of the head with the piping. Phil crumpled to the ground. As soon as he fell, the wind that was keeping the other men still died down. Seemingly forgetting about fighting each other, they surrounded Phil._

_Phil stirred weakly, too dazed to get to his feet. Then, all at once, the men began to hit him, and kick him with their steel-capped boots._

_Dan watched, horrified, as Phil curled in on himself, unable to focus enough to use his powers. A boot caught him in the ribs, and he cried out-_  
  
For the first time ever, Dan wrenched himself awake mid-vision, and promptly fell off his chair.

“Dan!” came Hazel’s voice, shrill and alarmed. “Dan, are you alright?”

Dan scrambled to his feet. “I’m sorry, I…I need to go.”

And leaving his bag lying on the table and his chair tipped over on the floor, he ran out of the library.

He sprinted to his dorm-room, and threw his on his costume in record time. He yanked open his dorm-room window, and dropped to the ground, landing in a crouch.

That’s more like it, he thought in satisfaction, as he sprang to his feet and started running again.

By the time he had left campus, Dan felt like he was actually going to die. He was gasping for breath, and he had a stitch on either side of his stomach. But he couldn’t afford to slow down; he had the sense that what he had seen was going to happen soon.

Thankfully, his time as the Night Terror meant that he knew Manchester better than most taxi-drivers. He had recognised the bridge in the vision. It was about a mile away from Uni.

By the time he reached the bridge, Phil was already standing in the middle of the men.

Dan heard him start to count down, saw the man with the piping getting to his feet. He didn’t have time to think of any other approach, he just ran at the man full-pelt. The collision was painful, and knocked both of them off their feet, with Dan landing on top of the man, who immediately kicked him off.

As Dan lay on the ground, more than a little dazed, he saw the other men getting up. The sudden appearance of the Night Terror had obviously distracted Phil, and his hold on the group had fallen away. Dan forced himself to his feet. A man lunged at him, and Dan kicked him hard, in the kneecap, then shoved him away.

He had always found the speculation that the Night Terror had a fighting-related super-power wildly amusing; he fought with absolutely no finesse, and his punches were truly unconvincing. The one advantage that he had was that he usually knew what his opponent was going to do before they did it, having seen it already in a vision.

This advantage was lost to him right now; Dan had already intervened when he charged in to save Phil, rendering the vision obsolete, and now he had no idea what was coming. He really hoped that Phil had something else up his sleeve, because otherwise they were both screwed.

The men started to close in around them, forcing them to stand back to back. Dan tried not to dwell on the fact that it was the first time he’d touched Phil in nearly two months, because this _so_ wasn’t the time for that kind of thinking.

Just when he was starting to believe they were actually doomed, Phil stepped forward. He made a swooping motion with one hand, and a dozen shards of ice appeared, pelting the men standing to Dan’s right. They dived out of the way, covering their eyes. Phil motioned his hand again, firing another round of projectile. He didn’t let up. The men couldn’t get anywhere near them. It was as though they were caught in a highly localised hail storm. Cursing, they scattered, running away in a dozen different directions.

Once they were gone, Phil grinned in satisfaction. Dan, for his part, was a little in awe.

Phil turned to him, and he hastily drew back a few steps. He was in costume, and it was reasonably dark under the bridge, but there was still the possibility that Phil would realise who he was. This was his cue to leave. He nodded at Phil, and started to walk away.

“Wait,” Phil called after him. “I have no idea how you knew to come help, but thanks. I think I was in a little over my head back there. Also, nice to meet you. I’m a massive fan.”

And he proffered his hand.

Dan felt a swell of fondness in his chest. God, he had missed Phil. Phil, kind, dorky, and completely at peace with his own strangeness.

Still, Dan hesitated. There was a real risk that Phil would recognise him if he got too close. To be honest, Dan wasn’t so sure that he didn’t want that. He had just resolved to shake his hand, come what may, when Phil squinted at him, and said, “Dan?”

Dan’s brain went entirely blank. “I…er…wh…how did you know?”

“I’d recognise you anywhere,” Phil said, and from the words, and his tone, Dan understood both that Phil was in love with him, despite everything, and that he was very, very angry.

He decided to tread carefully. “I have a lot to explain,” he said simply. “Will you hear me out?”

Phil’s posture was unyielding; his shoulders were a hard line, and his arms were crossed over his chest. He considered, and then nodded.

“We need to go somewhere else, though,” Dan said. “Those men might come back, or the cops might show up.” One look at Phil told him his flat was not an option. “I know a place,” he said.

He led Phil out from under the bridge, through several back-streets, and finally into an alley. The whole time they were walking, Phil didn’t say a word.

Dan stopped at the base of a rusted ladder that served as a fire escape. “Up here,” he announced.

“I was really hoping you weren’t going to say that,” Phil replied.

Dan looked at him in surprise. Phil, realising that he’d been too friendly, clamped his mouth shut and started to climb up the fire escape. Dan followed him.

The building was three stories high, and the ladder led straight to the roof. When Dan reached the top, Phil didn’t offer him a hand up.

The rooftop was one of Dan’s favourites; it was flat, easy to access, and seemingly perpetually empty. As an added bonus, it was lit by a line of fairy lights, which was strung between the posts that marked the roof’s edge. Dan wetted his lips. He felt sick with nerves. He was about to open up to Phil in ways he had never opened up to anyone, and he was distinctly aware that at the end of this conversation, he would either win him back, or lose him forever.

“So,” Dan began. “I’m the Night Terror.” His voice shook as he spoke; he had never said the words out loud before. “Or, I was. I stopped, around a year ago.”

“Why?” Phil asked.

An imagined pain emanated from the scar on Dan’s leg. “Something bad happened,” he said.

Phil’s brow furrowed at his evasion. Dan kept talking. “I didn’t stop having visions- I can’t stop the visions, but I started ignoring them. More or less.”

Phil gave him a questioning look.

“I still intervened when I had visions of people dying, only not in costume. I don’t think I could live with the knowledge that I watched someone die and didn’t try to stop it.”

Phil held up a hand. “Back when we were first talking, you told me you had three or four visions a week.”

Dan nodded.

“How many of those are visions of people dying?”

Dan shrugged. “Death visions are pretty rare. I get, maybe, one every two months?”

“So you must have had one while we were dating.”

Dan tried not to wince at his use of past tense. “I had one after that first day at yours, actually.”

“So, you just, what? Got home, and then popped back out again to save someone’s life?”

“Essentially, yeah,” Dan said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Dan?” Phil said, and the words seemed to explode out of him. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re the Night Terror? You know _everything_ about me. I told you _everything_. Did you not trust me at all?”

“Phil,” Dan said softly. “I did trust you. I _do_ trust you.” He swallowed. “I’ve been keeping my power secret ever since it first arrived, when I was thirteen years old. I didn’t tell my parents about it, I didn’t tell my friends. I kept it hidden, to keep myself safe. And then, when I was eighteen, and I became the Night Terror, I kept that a secret too. This world, it doesn’t like people like us. Staying silent, it’s my way of protecting myself, I guess.” He paused for breath. “I’ve been more honest with you than I’ve ever been with anyone. And if I’d still been a superhero while we were together, that would have been a different thing. I couldn’t have kept it secret, even if I wanted to, you would have wondered where I was vanishing off to all the time. But I was trying to leave the Night Terror in the past.”

Phil didn’t have to speak. He just looked Dan, who was still wearing his full superhero costume, up and down.

“Yeah well, as soon as I heard about the Blizzard, I knew it was you. And I knew it was only a matter of time before you got yourself into mortal danger, so I came out of retirement.” He realised just after speaking that this was the wrong thing to say.

“You really don’t think I can handle myself, do you?” Phil said, hotly.

“That’s not what I was trying to say,” Dan protested, hastily. “I just mean that being a superhero is inherently dangerous. It entails voluntarily putting yourself in violent situations on a near-nightly basis.”  
“You say that, but according to everyone the Night Terror never lost a fight.”

“I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t get the shit beaten out of me. Multiple times,” Dan said. “One time I actually got knocked into the River Irwell.”

Phil started laughing, and then stopped himself. “I don’t get why you tried to talk me out of being a hero,” he said. “When you were one yourself. It’s pretty damn hypocritical, Dan.”

“I know,” Dan said. “I know. But I just wanted to keep you safe. Being a hero, it’s so, so dangerous. And it’s horrible. Some of the things I saw, the things that happened to me, they messed me up. And I don’t want to see you become as jaded and cynical as I am. That’s why I said all of those horrible things to you, the last time we met, to try and stop you from doing this.”

“That’s the reason you said that stuff?” Phil said, his tone surprisingly urgent.

“Yeah.” Dan said. “Not that it worked, at all, since we’re both still h-”

Phil cut him off. “So you didn’t mean the things you said?” Hope was blossoming in his eyes. Dan realised that this was the crux of the matter, for Phil. Before he had found out about Dan’s alter-ego and his deception, it had been Dan’s words that had wounded him.

He looked Phil squarely in the eye. “Not a word,” he said, honestly. “I don’t think you’re inadequate, Phil, I think you’re _wonderful_.”

The tension left Phil’s frame. “I’ve missed you,” he said.

“I’ve missed you too,” Dan said. “The last two months have been miserable. I’ve wanted to call you a thousand times.”

Phil stepped forward and hugged him, tightly enough that Dan could feel his heartbeat. Dan buried his face in Phil’s shoulder and breathed him in.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Phil rubbed his back. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Is it?” Dan asked, a little helplessly.

Phil cupped Dan’s face in his hands, and pressed a careful kiss to his lips.

“Believe me now?” he said.

Dan tilted his head, coyly. “Might need a little more convincing.”

Phil kissed him again, and Dan lost himself to the sensation of Phil’s lips moving against his, the tickle of his breath against his cheek, the press of his body against his own. When Dan drew back, a few minutes later, Phil actually pouted.

“What’re you doing?” he grumbled.

Dan grinned at his reluctance.

“We’re visible from a few windows,” he explained. “And I’m not sure the Internet is ready for pictures of two gay superheroes making out.”

“Maybe that’s exactly what the Internet needs,” Phil countered, playfully, though he moved away from Dan, and headed over to the ladder.

Dan made to follow Phil and then paused, realising that Phil hadn’t actually offered. “Can I, can I come back with you?”

Phil raised his eyebrows. “Oh, of course! I’m not about to send you home after that.”

“Oh,” Dan said. “That’s good.”

They took a winding route of backroads and alleys on the way back to Phil’s. Even so, they passed a few people, who shot them looks ranging from confused to derisive.

“I swear people are staring at me, and not you,” Phil hissed in his ear.

“That’s because your suit is bright blue,” Dan replied. “And mine is lowkey magic.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ll explain later.”

When they finally reached Phil’s building, Dan realised a problem. “Phil, you live three thousand miles in the air. How the hell are we going to get to your place without people seeing us?”

Phil slipped a hand inside his cape and retrieved a plastic card. “I may have stolen a pass to the service lift at the back of the building, during a freak localised snow-storm.”

“Phil Lester, you’re a menace,” Dan said, delightedly.  
  
They took the lift up to Phil’s floor, and crept into his flat. Dan felt almost giddy, a feeling that only strengthened once they were inside, and Phil pushed him against the wall, plying him with kisses. Still kissing, they stumbled through the flat. In the bedroom doorway, Phil removed Dan’s mask. Dan ruffled his hair (helmet hair was a real problem) with one hand, while tearing off Phil’s visor with the other. Phil’s hands went from Dan’s shoulders to his waist… and then fell to his sides.

“I…I don’t know how to take this off,” he admitted.

Dan burst out laughing. “You unclip the front part from the belt… here let me do it.”

Eventually, clothing discarded, they made it into Phil’s bed. Phil shifted so he was straddling Dan’s hips, and Dan leaned up to kiss him, a long kiss that was _I miss you_ and _I’m sorry_ and _let’s never be apart again_ , all rolled into one. As they moved together, Dan felt the loneliness of the last few weeks ebb away.

Afterwards, when they were lying in the dark, not quite ready to sleep, Phil said, “Will you tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“Why you stopped being the Night Terror.”

Dan was silent.

Phil sighed. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but if we’re going to do this again, we can’t have any more secrets.” He ran an icy hand up and down Dan’s forearm. “You can tell me anything. I’m not just saying that, I mean it. If you did something wrong, I won’t judge you. And if something bad happened to you, you’re safe now. I’ve got you.”

“No more secrets,” Dan said, trying out the words. “Okay, what the hell. So, this was almost a year ago. By this point, people knew about the Night Terror, I had a cult Internet following, and actual newspapers were writing stories about me. And I guess all that made me forget, you know. That people weren’t on my side.”

He could make out Phil’s eyes, glinting in the dark.

“And then one afternoon I was in class when I had this vision of two guys robbing a bank a gunpoint. The manager tried to stop them, and they shot her, three times, in the chest. And there were people. Inside the bank. Thirteen of them, trapped in there while the theft was going on. So I bolted out of class-”

Phil let out a low snicker, wrenching Dan out of his story.

“Sorry,” he said, when Dan paused. “It’s just funny to imagine you bolting anywhere.”

Dan huffed a sigh. “Whatever. So I got to the bank right before the burglars. I got the jump on one of them, and managed to get the gun out of his hand, and hit him with it. While this was going on, the people in the bank evacuated out of the back of the building. I pointed the gun at the other guy, and I mean, I had no idea how to fire it, but he didn’t know that, so we were just standing there, with our guns pointed at each other, neither of us able to move. I was terrified that the guy I’d knocked out was going to get up. And then… the cops showed up. And I remember being so relieved, you know, because that meant it was over, that everyone was safe. So I just stood there, as a bunch of the cops went to restrain the two guys. But then a couple went for me.  I didn’t react quick enough; I tried to get away, and I got tasered.”

Phil’s hand tightened on Dan’s arm.

“The pain was so bad, Phil, you wouldn’t believe. So I tripped over, nearly blacked out. Then the cops hauled me to my feet, and dragged me out to the car, to cuff me.” Dan’s throat was starting to feel tight, as the memories washed over him. “One of them was young, he didn’t speak. But the older one wouldn’t stop talking, about how I was a freak, about how I d-deserved this, how I was going to be locked up for the rest of my life.” He could feel hot tears pricking in his eyes. He kept talking. “But he made a mistake, see. He was so eager to unmask me, that he did it _while_ the young guy was cuffing me, not after. He tore my mask off, and the young guy, he kind of twisted, to see my face. And that was my chance. I kicked him, as hard as I could, in the nuts, in the knee, I don’t know, but he let go of me. Then I shoved the older guy, and I started running.”

Phil exhaled loudly. “So you got away?”

“I did,” Dan said. “But…these cops had come to stop a bank robbery. They had guns.”

“Oh God,” Phil said.  
“I was at the end of the street, when I heard the noise, and I felt it; a bullet, tearing through my leg.”  
Dan felt divided. Half of him was safe in bed, with Phil, but half of him was back there, reliving it the pain all over again, remembering how his leg had given out beneath him, but he had kept going, because he had no choice. “I sort of tumbled into an alley, and took a bunch of twist and turns, enough to shake the cops. But by this point I was bleeding really badly, and my head was spinning.” He remembered how his eyesight had flickered, how the world had seemed far away. “And it _hurt_ , Phil,” he said, voice small and plaintive, “So much worse than the taser. I was in this alley, and I was starting to pass out, but I knew I couldn’t just call an ambulance; I’d only wind up getting arrested again. So I called Louise.”

“Louise?”

“The woman who made my costume. She only knew me as the Night Terror, and we weren’t c-close or anything, I didn’t know if she’d come. But she did. By the time she got there, I’d blacked out. She stripped off my costume, bandaged up the wound herself the best she could, and then took me to a hospital in Liverpool. Saved my life.”

There was a silence. “So that’s it,” Dan said, weakly. He was crying, but he couldn’t quite remember when the tears had started to fall in earnest. “That’s why I quit.”

“Oh, Dan,” Phil breathed. He pulled Dan into his arms, and Dan let himself sob, his tears running onto Phil’s bare chest. Phil held him for a long time, murmuring an endless stream of comfort. Eventually Dan recovered enough to say, “It wasn’t even getting shot- it was knowing that the people I’d been working to save- they didn’t care about me. They wanted me locked away, they wanted me dead- I bet whoever shot me wasn’t aiming for my leg.”

“You can’t know that,” Phil said. “But I hope you do know, you didn’t deserve any of that. You’re a good person, Dan.” His voice got softer, and he spoke the next words into Dan’s ear. “The best person. You were my hero, still are, to be honest. And sure, some of the world hates people like us, but a lot of it doesn’t. There’s a lot of good people out there.”

“You really believe that, don’t you?” Dan said.

“’Course I do,” Phil said. “And I hope one day you believe it too.”

“You’re not going to stop being a hero, are you?” Dan said.

“No,” Phil said. “And I don’t think you should, either. You’re magnificent as the Night Terror, Dan. And you shouldn’t let a few _evil, bigoted_ people keep you from doing what you’re good at.”

“Mm, I like you when you’re indignant,” Dan said, without thinking.

Phil laughed, and rolled them both over, so Dan was the little spoon, cocooned in his arms.

“In case it needed saying, I love you, Dan,” he said. It _didn’t_ really need saying; Dan knew how Phil felt, but even so the words made his stomach swoop, and sent a grin creeping onto his face.

“I love you too,” he said. “This is embarrassing, but I fell for you before we even met.”

“Me too,” Phil said.

“Nerds,” Dan muttered, drowsily. The last thing he was aware of before falling asleep was Phil pressing a kiss to the side of his head.

 


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning Dan woke up feeling radiantly, unreservedly happy.

He lay still with his eyes closed, as his half-asleep brain tried to remember why he was in such a good mood. He smiled as it came to him; he was back with Phil, Phil knew everything, and he loved him, he had actually said it.

He cracked his eyes open. His happiness dipped momentarily, when he noticed that Phil wasn’t in bed next to him, but returned in full force when he caught the unmistakeable smell of pancakes wafting from the kitchen. Possibly the only thing better than waking up with Phil, was waking up to Phil making him pancakes.

He climbed out of bed, dressed in fresh clothes of Phil’s, and all but bounded into the kitchen. Phil, who was standing by the stove, turned as he approached. “Hi,” Dan said, leaning in and kissing him. Phil had a spatula in his hand, and his mouth tasted of maple syrup.

“Hi,” he said. “I was about to come in and wake you.”

Dan realised that the kitchen was flooded with warm light. “What time _is_ it?” he asked.

“Nearly one,” Phil said.

Dan whistled. “Last night must’ve really wore me out.”

Phil’s eyes grew mischievous. “ _Yeah_ it did,” he said, voice low and suggestive.

Dan felt his face grow hot. “I didn’t mean it like that!”

“ _Sure_ you didn’t.” Phil said in the same tone. “Are you blushing?

“Shut up!” Dan spluttered. Phil laughed, and kissed him again, before turning back to the pan. “This is the last one,” he said. “Do you want to flip it?”

Dan shook his head. “No, no, no, that’s too much responsibility for me. I’m just going to stand here and laugh if you do it wrong.”

“Charming,” Phil said, picking up the pan.

“Did you drop any of the earlier ones?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know. Don’t check the bin. Okay, here goes.”

Dan held his breath as Phil flicked the pancake into the air, where it flipped over, and started hurtling back down - before landing with a satisfying smack in the centre of the pan.

“I caught it,” Phil said, sounding surprised.

Dan recovered from his own shock in time to offer some criticism. “It was quite a _safe_ throw. Not a lot of elevation-”

Phil shushed him. “I caught it, it was a success. Now let’s eat.”

Dan grabbed the necessary plates and utensils, while Phil transported the towering stack of pancakes over to the sofa.

 

He waited until Dan took his first big bite of pancake before saying, “So, Dan, there’s something I want to talk to you about.” Dan’s eyes must have widened in alarm, because Phil hastily clarified, “It’s not about us, we’re fine, we’re more than fine. It’s about the other thing.”

Dan chewed and swallowed. “The superhero thing,” he said, heavily.

“Yup,” Phil said. He took a deep breath. “I get it, Dan. I understand why you don’t want me to do it. But I’m not going to stop.”

And sitting there, in Phil’s tiny lounge, Dan forced himself to accept that. There was nothing he could say to change Phil’s mind; the only thing arguing would accomplish was driving him away again.  
“Okay,” he said, at last.

Phil grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that. Why the change of heart?”

“You’re the stubbornest person I know, Phil Lester. There’s no persuading you. And,” he added, “Maybe part of me recognises that you have a right to make your own decisions. Even if most of me is terrified by the thought of you getting hurt.”

Phil fumbled for Dan’s hand, and squeezed it. His fingers were slightly sticky from syrup. “That means a lot to me, Dan.”

But Dan wasn’t finished. “I’m coming with you,” he announced.

When Phil replied, his voice was soft. “I didn’t want to suggest it. In case you were still traumatised from what happened. Are you sure?”

Dan nodded. “I can help you. I can stop you getting hurt, and I can see crimes before they happen, so you won’t have to waste time finding them yourself.”

Phil laughed gently. “I know it’s a good deal for me, I’m just checking that it’s what you want.”

Dan shrugged. “If I don’t come with you, I’m only going to spend every night you’re gone lying awake worrying.”

“Alright then,” Phil said. “It’s settled. Should we shake hands?”

Dan shot him a look. “Why would we do that, you berk?”

“Sorry,” Phil said, sitting back. “I’m just excited. We’re going to be a _crime-fighting duo_.” He laughed. “Dan, Dan, we’re going to be an actual _power couple_.”

“Oh my God, calm down,” Dan said, going back to his pancakes. A thought occurred to him. “Did you make these to soften me up?” he said.

Phil’s guilty expression was as good as a confession.

“I can’t believe you, Phil!” Dan said, indignant (but still eating, because it was a better man than he who could forgo pancakes for his principles). “These are bribe pancakes!”

“Not really,” Phil said. “I wanted to do something nice for you anyway. These are “we just got back together and also I love you” pancakes. Though they may be drizzled with “please hear me out” sauce,” he added.

“And here I was thinking it was maple syrup,” Dan quipped, but he was grinning like an idiot, and they both knew it.  
  
***  
  
Dan’s phone had died some point the previous night. After their late breakfast Dan left it charging in Phil’s bedroom. When he returned he was greeted by an influx of notifications.

It looked as though Hazel had freaked out following the Library Incident, which he couldn’t really blame her for, and had proceeded to get all of their friends to try and contact him. He surveyed the increasingly concerned messages with pursed lips. He was going to have to do a lot of damage control.

He texted a **dw im fine** to Hazel. Two minutes later, he received her reply:

**u have some EXPLAINING to do Howell.**

He gulped.

It suddenly occurred to him that Hazel still had his bag, which, he realised, with an actual pang in his chest, had his laptop in it. There was no putting it off, he had to deal with this mess.

“Phil,” he called. A moment later Phil appeared in the doorway.  
“What’s up, did you have a vision?”  
“No, nothing that exciting. I’ve just got to drop by Uni for a bit, pick up some stuff.”  
“Oh, alright. You’ll come back, though?”  
“Course I will,” Dan said, kissing his cheek as he passed him in the doorway. “You won’t be able to shake me now, Philly. I’m gonna stick to you like glue. Glue with a fringe.”

He didn’t have to look back to see Phil’s disturbed face; he could picture it perfectly.  
  
***  
  
When he got to campus, Dan texted Hazel, **u home?**

**No, but I have your stuff with me. Meet you at ur room?**

**k, sure**

Hazel was leaning against the wall next to Dan’s door when he arrived, his bag resting at her feet.

“How did you get here so quick?” he asked, as he let them into the room. “Wait, did you come here from Jack’s room! I bet you did!”

Hazel glowered. “I am _so_ not the one being interrogated here. That would be you. What happened, Dan, in the library?”

Dan told the lie he had used at least a dozen times before in situations like this one. “I get seizures, sometimes. It’s not a big deal, they’re not life-threatening or anything. But sometimes they leave me a bit disorientated. That’s why I ran off.”

He watched Hazel accept this story. “So you’re okay now, then?”

“Yeah, 100%.”

“Where did you go, after you ran off? I know you weren’t here, I knocked.”

“I, er. I went to Phil’s, actually.”

“And you didn’t come back until now, which means-”

“We sorted things out. We’re back together.”

Hazel looked as though she was finding this all a lot to take in. Dan wondered what she would do if she heard the full story. “And it didn’t occur to you to check your phone during any of this,” she said, finally, voice slightly strained.

Dan shrugged. “I was busy talking with Phil, and _not_ talking with Phil.”

Hazel rolled her eyes. “God, you’re a shit friend.”

Dan gave a surprised laugh. “Yeah, I guess I kind of am. Sorry about that.”

Hazel handed Dan back his bag. He realised that she had been holding it hostage until she got her answers. “I suppose I’ll text everyone, tell them you’re still alive.”

“You could try to sound more enthusiastic about that.”

“No.”

Hazel took a step toward the door. Dan didn’t think she was _really_ mad at him, but even so he said, “Er, thanks for looking out for me. I appreciate it.”

“God knows someone has to do it,” Hazel said, but her eyes had softened slightly. “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

Dan hefted his bag over his shoulder. “I was going to grab some clothes and head back to Phil’s. Are you going back to Jack’s?”

“No, I’m going to go prepare for the law quiz tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah,” Dan said. “That.”

Hazel gave him a parting glance of total despair.  
  
***  
  
When Dan opened the door of Phil’s flat he was greeted by a blast of icy air.

“Phil!” he said shrilly, wrapping his arms around himself as he ventured inside. “What are you doing in here?”

“Sorry!” came Phil’s voice. A few seconds later he came into view, holding what looked like a knife made of ice in each hand.

“Just practising,” Phil said, going to hug him.

Dan hastily side-stepped him. “Phil, I love you, but I don’t trust you not to impale me right now.”

Phil looked down, and laughed. “Oh yeah. Forgot I was holding these.”

“You’re literally going to be the death of me,” Dan mumbled, as Phil went to set the knives down in the sink.

The arctic chill was starting to leave the apartment, but even so, Dan cranked up the heating the full way.

“So, how was Uni?” said Phil, reappearing, thankfully minus the murder instruments.

“Alright. I disappeared really dramatically yesterday, so all of my friends have been texting me, wondering if I’m dead, but I set the record straight.”

Phil tilted his head. “Since when do you have friends at Uni?” he asked. His eyes went wide as he realised how bad the question had sounded. “I didn’t mean that,” he said, quickly. “You’ve always had friends at Uni, I mean, friends who actually care about you. Oh God, I’m making it worse. I mean-”

Dan put a hand over his mouth before he could do any more damage, removing it when Phil nipped at his palm.

“No, it’s a new development,” he conceded.

Phil grinned. “Well I’m glad you’ve made friends. That’s what Uni’s all about, connecting with like-minded people. It’ll get so much better for you now.”

Dan didn’t voice what he was thinking; that all the friendship in the world couldn’t change the complete apathy he felt toward his classes.

He mirrored Phil’s smile, and let himself be pulled into a knife-free hug.  
  
***  
  
Two days later, they were debating what to order for dinner, when another vision struck.

When he came to, Phil was cupping his face. “Dan, you okay? What did you see?”

“Home invasion,” Dan said, and gave him an approximate address.

“Soon?”

Dan thought about it. “Soon.”

“Alright,” Phil said, clapping his hands against his jeans. “This is it, lads.”

“Phil, I’m the only one here,” Dan pointed out, but Phil was already heading to the bedroom, where his costume was no doubt scrunched up on the floor.

Dan caught Phil’s eyes on him while they were sneaking out of the building.

“What?” he demanded.

Phil looked at him searchingly. “Have you missed this?”

Dan made a dismissive noise. “I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about being the Night Terror. I care about you. And if fighting crime is what it takes to keep you safe, I’ll do it.”

“Right,” Phil said, but as they walked on, Dan still felt his eyes burning into the back of his neck.  
  
***  
  
“I think that well,” Phil said, as they trudged back into the apartment.

“Well!” Dan repeated, incredulously. “You threw ice at my face!”

“Not on purpose! I thought you were the bad guy!”

“He was a foot shorter than me! And you know, not dressed as the Night Terror! How the hell did you mix us up?”

“I dunno, I panicked.”

“It got _inside_ my mask,” Dan whined.

“Surely that shouldn’t have been able to happen,” Phil said. “Louise must have left too big of a gap around the eyes.”

“Yeah, ‘cause _Louise_ is clearly the problem here,” Dan said, removing the mask, and fixing Phil with his most disapproving glare.

Phil looked suitably apologetic for all of two seconds, before his lip twitched, then he burst out laughing. “I’m sorry...” he said, in between giggles. “You have frost in your eyebrows.”

Dan gave a huff of exasperation, and stomped off to the bathroom. Once he was done vigorously scrubbing his brows, Phil, who had followed him, said, “It wasn’t a total disaster, though, was it? I mean, we caught the guy, after all. And you had fun, right, before the unfortunate ice-ing incident. It was fun?”

Dan was all ready to rip into Phil some more, and he would have, if it wasn’t for the hint of uncertainty that had laced his final three words.

He met Phil’s eyes in the mirror with a small smile. “Yeah, it was fun,” he said.

Phil came up behind Dan and hugged him, resting his head on Dan’s shoulder. “Good.”  
  
***  
  
Things improved rapidly after that quasi-disastrous first outing. Dan, who had been worried that the synchronicity from their day-to-day lives wouldn’t translate into their superhero work, was highly relieved.

The word quickly spread around the Internet that the Night Terror was back, and that he wasn’t working alone.

The day after the first grainy, long-distance picture of the Night Terror and the Blizzard showed up on the Internet, Dan received a text from an unknown number.

**So ur back in the game. And u’ve got urself a sidekick.  
-L.**

**not a sidekick, Louise,** Dan replied. **partner.**

**Well whatever he is, he needs a new suit, the one in the pic is ghastly!**

**right?!  
will u make him one?**

**I’ll need to take his measurements. Bring him in for a fitting tomorrow.**  
  
***  
  
“Well this is a lot less intimidating than I was expecting,” Phil said, as they walked down Louise’s nice, suburban street.

“What _were_ you expecting?”

“I don’t know, an underground studio? An abandoned warehouse?”

“You’ve seen too many movies.”

“Well, that’s a given.”

As they turned up Louise’s garden path, Dan touched Phil’s arm.

“Phil, remember-” he started.

“Don’t tell her our names, we trust her, but not that much, I know,” Phil said.

Dan blinked- “Alright then,” and rang the doorbell.

Half a minute later, Louise opened the front door, wearing a pink dress and slippers shaped like cats. Dan saw her quickly appraise Phil, before her eyes settled on him.

They hadn’t seen in each other in more than a year. Dan had left hospital shortly after receiving treatment for his leg, against the doctor’s recommendation. He knew that it wasn’t safe to stay there while the police were searching for him. He had spent several days holed up in Louise’s guest-room, loopy on pain-killers, before he was well enough to return to his Uni dorms.

And, after that, he had quit. He had sent Louise one text explaining that he was giving up being the Night Terror, she had replied “I understand”, and that had been it.

“Well look at you,” Louise said, after a long while. “I think you’ve gotten even taller.”

“You look great,” Dan said.

Louise made a show of fluttering her eyelashes. “Always were a charmer. Come in, come in,” she said to the pair of them, turning back into the house, and leading them to her studio.

It was exactly as Dan remembered it; a beautiful, vibrant war zone. Strips of fabric hung from the walls and trailed across the floor, mannequins sporting half-finished ball gowns lurked sinisterly in the corners, and sketches littered the desk and spilled onto the floor.

“Wow,” Phil breathed, the first word he’d said since meeting Louise.

“My husband’s taken Darcy out, so we have the place to ourselves.”

“Darcy?” Dan inquired.

Louise laughed. “My baby. I have a baby now!”

“My God,” Dan said. “Congratulations.”

“My God’s about right,” Louise said. “I have no idea what I’m doing; speaking of which,” she said, rounding on Phil, “what on Earth do you think _you’re_ doing, wearing that awful, awful blue costume?”

“I-I thought it was alright,” Phil stammered.

Dan cocked an eyebrow.

“Can you honestly say that?”

Phil’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “No, not really, but it’s the best I could do.”

“Luckily,” Louise said, “I can do better.”

She rummaged around in a cluttered desk drawer, and emerged clutching a role of measuring tape.

“How’s your leg?” she asked Dan. “Did it heal up Ok?”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “Thanks to you. So, tell me about Darcy.”

Louise smiled. “Oh, she’s wonderful, she’s so entirely wonderful. Blizzard- yes, you, gosh, you can tell you’re new at this- I just need to get your measurements, can you stand straight, with your shoulders back…”  
  
***  
  
“I don’t understand why you say you don’t trust Louise-,” Phil said, nearly two hours later, as they walked back down her street. “You two get on like a house on fire.”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “Yeah, I know, it’s…” he sighed. “It’s complicated. I _do_ trust her, she’s been nothing but supportive of me, and you know, she saved my life that one time…”

“But?” Phil prompted.

“It’s just…when it comes to people with powers, the police can be pretty underhand.”

“You don’t say,” Phil said, darkly. Dan knew he was recalling Dan’s story about the shooting.

“And Louise, she’s- and this is going to sound douchey- she’s a civilian. I know she wouldn’t rat me out, but if the police ever came knocking at her door… Louise has got a life; a job, a husband, now a kid. If protecting me jeopardised that…well, she wouldn’t pick me. I don’t blame her, at all, but that’s why I haven’t told her my identity, so it never has to come to that.”

Phil was quiet for several beats.

“It’s a lonely life, isn’t it?” he said, finally.

Dan was startled; he wasn’t used to such profound statements from Phil. He threaded his fingers through Phil’s, and squeezed his hand. “Not all that lonely anymore.”  
  
_He was standing in a locked department store, and something was very, very wrong.  
Everything was blurry, like he was viewing the world through an out of focus camera, and even though the fluorescent lights above him were blaring, all of the colours were heavily muted. Dan rubbed his eyes, which, considering that he wasn’t corporeal, did absolutely nothing to his quality of vision. _

_The front window of the store had been smashed in. As Dan watched, a security guard hurried down the stationery escalator in the centre of the store. The rush of motion made the store around him ripple like disturbed water. Dan felt slightly nauseous._  
The guard was overweight, and was gripping a taser with both hands. He took a few, hesitant steps from the base of the escalator. Suddenly, another man, wearing a grey balaclava, stepped out from behind a row of clothes and rapped him neatly on the back of his head, with some object in his hand. The security guard crumpled, and just before he came to, Dan saw that the man in the balaclava was holding a gun.  
  
Dan scrambled for his phone; it was one of the rare nights that he and Phil spent apart. He glanced at the time on the screen as the call connected- 11pm- Phil would still be awake.

“Miss me?” Phil said.

“No. I mean, yes, but… I had a vision.”

“What of?” Phil responded, instantly business-like.

“A guy, breaking into a freaking Debenhams. He knocked out a security guard. He had a gun.”

“We’ll have to be careful then. Do you know where?”

“Yeah.” Dan gave him the address. “But…”

“But what?”  
“The vision was weird, Phil. All fuzzy, and grey. I’ve never had one like it before. They’re normally crystal clear.”

“Maybe you’re tired,” Phil suggested. “My eyes blur when they’re tired.”

“I don’t think inner eyes can get tired, Phil. But anyway, we’re wasting time.”

“How long do we have?”

Dan considered. Even his sense of timing felt uncertain. “Soon?”

“I’ll meet you there.”

Dan agreed, and hung up.  
  
***  
  
Phil was already standing on the street corner by the time Dan got there.

“Hey,” Dan said, announcing his arrival, because as much as he delighted in scaring Phil, even he could see it would be cruel in this circumstance.

“How’re you?” Phil said.

“Great,” Dan said. “This is 100% my idea of a fun Friday night.”

“It’s a Tuesday.”

“I knew that.”

“What’s our approach?”

Dan considered. “The guy’s going to break the front window. That can be our way in, too. Then he’s going to hide, and lie in wait for the security guard. Just before he ambushes the guard, _we_ should ambush him, and get the gun off him. I’ll get the guard to safety while you ice the guy. Then we cuff him to a radiator, call the police, and get the fuck out of there.” Dan always kept a few pairs of plastic cuffs in his utility belt. “What do you think?”

Phil nodded. “S’a good plan. Got any idea when the guy’s going to break the-” He was interrupted by the sound of shattering. “Let’s roll.”

They hurried down the street and crept up to the window. The guy wasn’t in view.

“All clear,” Dan said. Just as he was about to step through the hole in the glass, Phil grabbed his arm.

“Look,” he hissed, pointing to the sheet of glass to their left.

The glass was mostly intact, aside from a small fracture, emanating from a bullet-hole. Dan followed the imaginary trajectory of the bullet, and saw the remains of an alarm.

“He shot out the alarm,” Phil whispered.

Dan felt a wave of unease. This guy knew what he was doing.

He stepped through the window, and heard the slight tinkle of broken glass hitting the floor as Phil followed him. He shot Phil a look over his shoulder. Phil shrugged as if to say _hey, it_ _could have gone worse_. Dan supposed that was true. He turned his attention back to the store, looking for a place for them to hide. He set off in the direction of a likely-looking makeup counter, Phil at his side.

They had almost made it when a voice behind them said “I was hoping you two would show up.”

 _Shit_ , Dan thought. Outwardly, he kept his composure, turning around slowly. Surely enough, it was the man in the grey balaclava. He was almost as tall as they were, and broader around the shoulders.

“What sort of idiot hopes for two superheroes to show up?” he said, partly because he never wanted to be the superhero that _didn’t_ sass people, and partly to give Phil time to do whatever it was he was going to do. The man didn’t reply, but Dan thought that he might have smiled beneath the balaclava, which made him uneasy.

A second later, Phil struck, with a gust of icy wind so powerful it made Dan stagger. Lightning fast, the man in the balaclava dodged the attack, dropping to the floor and rolling like a character from a video game.

“Shit,” Dan said, out loud this time.

The man sprang to his feet, and lunged at them. He swung a punch at Dan, who only just managed to get his forearm up in time to block it. While he was off-balance the man rammed him with his shoulder.  
  
Phil came at the man from the side. Dan knew that he was trying to freeze him, by touching fingers to his forehead, but he never got the chance. The moment Phil was in range the man grabbed him by the front of his suit and _threw_ him. Phil went crashing into a display of mannequins.

The fight was interrupted briefly by the security guard appearing at the top of the escalator. He took one look at the scene panning before him and, quite sensibly, bolted.

The man in the balaclava swung at Dan again. This time Dan failed to block the punch. A fist connected solidly, _painfully_ with his throat. Phil emerged from the pile of mannequins and aimed another gust of wind at the man in the balaclava. The gust connected-unfortunately it knocked the man directly into Dan, toppling them both. They grappled on the floor for a moment, until the man pinned him down. Phil rushed over to intervene; the man back-handed him in the face hard enough that he disappeared from Dan’s view.

“Enough of this,” he said, tearing off Dan’s right glove, and pressing his fingers to his skin. Instantly Dan felt a horrible, draining sensation, like nothing he had ever experienced before. It only lasted a few seconds, but he was left feeling light-headed and shaky.

The man got up lightly, shoving Dan back down when he tried to imitate him. Dan felt too wobbly to try again.

“What the fuck did you do to me?” he gasped.

“Took your power,” the man said. “I’m currently trying to ascertain exactly _what_ that power is.” You…took my power,” Dan said, slowly.

“Not forever,” the man said lightly. “Before you worry. I’m only borrowing it. That’s my power. The name’s Leech, by the way.” He tilted his head. “Seriously, what do you do? I’ll figure it out soon enough, you might as well tell me. I know you can find crimes long before the police even hear about them, what is it? Some kind of sixth -Ahhh.”

Leech’s monologue was cut short by Phil launching an avalanche of ice shards at his head. Phil was unrelenting; Leech was forced to take cover behind a rack of clothes.

“You alright?” Phil asked. He had stopped firing ice; Leech had disappeared into the rows of racks on the store-floor and it was impossible to tell where he was.

“Yeah,” Dan said. Thankfully, his energy was rapidly returning to him.

Leech’s voice drifted over from somewhere amongst the racks.  “No offense, Night Terror, but your power doesn’t seem all that exciting. Think I might try out your friend’s…”

He burst out of the stacks, a little to the side of where they had been expecting. He kicked at Dan, sweeping his legs out from underneath him, and turned on Phil. Phil formed an ice blade, and swung at him; it slashed through his jacket, and he hissed in pain before jabbing Phil in the wrist. Phil dropped the blade. Leech grabbed him by the exposed skin of his throat, Phil pulled away, and then… Leech froze.

Phil shoved Leech in the chest; he toppled over like a felled tree. Dan tentatively leaned over to look at him. Leech’s eyes were open, but glazed. He and Phil realised what was happening at the same time.

“He’s having a vision!” Phil exclaimed.

“Yeah, and it won’t last long. Run!”  
  
***  
  
A night of hero-work usually left them buzzing with accomplishment and leftover adrenaline; that night they trudged back to Phil’s apartment in near-silence.

Once they were inside, Dan grabbed a bag of green beans from the freezer, before sitting down next to Phil on the sofa. Phil’s nose was starting to swell from where Leech had hit him.

“Thanks,” Phil said, taking off his visor and pressing the bag to his face. “Hope I don’t wind up with black eyes, I’m s’posed to be going to PJ’s tomorrow. How’s your throat?”

Dan removed his mask. “Fine,” he said. It wasn’t fine; it hurt whenever he spoke, and in any other situation he would have been making a fuss about it by now.

There was a pause.

“So,” Dan said. “That was-”

“Bracing,” Phil finished.

“I was going to go for _a total failure_ , but sure, _bracing_.”

“It wasn’t a total failure, Dan,” Phil said, voice slightly muffled by the bag. “Sure, we got our asses handed to us, but neither of us got seriously hurt. And we stopped that guard from getting concussed.”

“That’s true,” Dan said, grudgingly. “And at least he only got his hands on my power. I dread to think what he would have done with yours.”

“Ice rampage,” Phil said, not without some relish. “Has your power come back yet?”

“It’s impossible to know until I have a vision,” Dan said. “He did say he wouldn’t have it for long, though.” He stared down at his feet. “I just can’t believe he beat us.” The Night Terror’s perfect record was a thing of the past. They had been thoroughly out-classed.

“Dan,” Phil said. “Hey, Dan.” He lowered the bag from his face. “It doesn’t matter that he beat us.”

Dan made a scoffing sound. Phil pressed on. “It doesn’t matter that he beat us, _this time_. Because I have a feeling we’re going to run into this Leech guy again. And when that happens, we’ll win. There’s two of us, one of him. As long as we don’t let him take our powers, we can beat him. Okay?”

He looked to Dan, his eyes steely.

Dan felt a swell of pride. He nodded. “Okay. Okay. Now, put that ice back on.”  
  
***  
  
On Saturday, Louise texted to tell him that Phil’s suit was ready; they swung by later that day. Once she had let them in, Louise escorted Phil into the studio, but rounded on Dan when he tried to follow.

“Not you! You can’t see it before it’s on, it’ll ruin the effect.”

“Oh, Ok,” Dan started to say, but the door had already clicked shut.

Dan sighed, and wandered over to Darcy’s crib. Sometime later (it could have been ten minutes or half an hour, Dan had lost track of time cooing over Darcy), Louise called “Ok, we’re coming out”.

Dan turned just as the door opened and Phil emerged, in his new costume. If Louise hadn’t been there, he would have wolf-whistled. Phil looked _hot_.

The suit was made from a similar material to Dan’s. Dan tried to not become too distracted by the way it clung to his chest and shoulders.  Louise had changed the colour from bright turquoise to a more metallic, aqua tone which Dan infinitely preferred. She had kept the short cape, only now it was made of a shimmery fabric which seemed to blend into the wall behind him.

“Louise, you’ve out-done yourself,” Dan said.

Louise smiled. “I know.”

“Give us a twirl, then,” he said, to Phil.

Phil did a clumsy spin, his cape swirling around him. “You like it?” he said.

“Of course,” Dan said.

Then followed several rounds of both Dan and Phil trying to give Louise money, while she staunchly refused payment (“What kind of person charges a superhero?”). Eventually Louise emerged victorious.

On the train ride home, Dan’s phone buzzed with a text from her.

**‘Partner’, then? ;)**

**oh shut up.  
how did u figure it out?**

**U should have seen ur face when he came out in the suit. Ur smitten, kitten.** Dan could almost _hear_ Louise’s glee.

 **shut up** , he texted again.

**I guess that makes you two…a power couple!!**

Dan groaned loudly. “What?” said Phil. Dan showed him the screen. “I can’t believe you went for the same shitty pun.”

Phil, however, had taken something else away from the conversation. “Smitten, eh?” he said, nudging Dan in the ribs.

Dan lowered his phone. “She’s wrong,” he deadpanned. “I actually hate you.”

“Is that so?”

“Mm hmm.” He rested his head on Phil’s shoulder. “And don’t you forget it.”

***

Dan was pretty sure his visions were getting more frequent. In between the Saturday they visited Louise and the following Friday, he had no fewer than a dozen visions.

He brought it up with Phil one afternoon.

Phil scratched his cheek. “I suppose it makes sense,” he said. “I didn’t start off being able to do most the things I can do now- it took experimentation, and practise.”

“It _doesn’t_ make sense though,” Dan contended. “You had to work to make your powers expand. This is just happening to me.”

Phil shrugged. “That’s all I’ve got.”

Dan was less than thrilled about this increase in visions. Life was quite busy enough already- he had to give a presentation to his law class on Wednesday, which he somehow managed to get through without spontaneously combusting, and on Thursday, he and Phil filmed another video together.

Through it all, Dan kept expecting Leech to rear his balaclava-ed head, but it wasn’t until Friday night that he saw him again.

He was dreaming an unpleasant dream, where he had to deliver a parcel to the Dean of his University, only he didn’t know where the Dean was, or even who they were, and he was starting to think that the parcel contained something _alive_ … _w_ hen the dream ended, and a vision began.  
  
_Everything was washed out and blurry, like it had been in the department store vision. Dan was in an open, white space._

_At his feet knelt another Dan, dressed as the Night Terror. He was holding Phil in his arms, and Phil was dying; two red stains spreading across the front of his suit._

_Dan watched the other Dan shout at someone behind him to call an ambulance, before turning back to Phil._

_Phil mumbled something Dan couldn’t catch; in response, the other Dan tore off his own mask, then Phil’s visor. Both of their faces were wet with tears._

_The other Dan took Phil’s hand. “Dan,” Phil said, his voice, very, very weak. “I love you. It’s not your fault.” He coughed a nasty, gurgling cough, and a trickle of blood ran out of the corner of his mouth._

_The other Dan was crying so hard, his answering “I love you” was barely decipherable._

_A moment later, Phil went still. The other Dan bent down to press his lips to Phil’s, then buried his face in the crook of his neck, his shoulders shaking._  
  
Dan woke in Phil’s bedroom. It was storming outside, and the room was very dark.

Phil was asleep beside him. Dan flicked a light on, and sat for several minutes, watching the rise and fall of his breathing.

As he sat, Phil began to stir; the light had woken him up. His eyes cracked open. “Dan, what’re you…” He saw Dan’s face, and trailed off. “What’s the matter?”

“I had a vision,” Dan said, hoarsely.

Phil sat up. “Do we need to-”

“No,” Dan said. “It was a vision of you. You…you died.”

“Oh,” Phil said.  
  
***  
  
“So you don’t know when or where it’s going to happen?”

They had moved to the main room. It was gone three AM. Outside, the wind was howling, and rain lashed against the windows.

Dan shook his head. “Leech does something to my visions, nothing was clear. My guess is…anywhere between a week and a month from now.”

“That’s a long time,” Phil noted. “Longer than usual.”

Phil was right. Though there had been exceptions, Dan’s visions usually occurred within forty-eight hours of him having them.

“I might have been able to work out _where_ it was,” Dan continued. “But I was… distracted.”

“And you’re sure it was a vision, and not a dream?” Phil couldn’t stay still; he kept pacing up and down the little room, perching on the arm of a chair, only to spring up a moment later.

“I’m sure.”

“Shit.” Phil ran a hand through his hair, which was already stuck up from sleep.

“You know,” Dan said, “The surest way to avoid this happening would just be to stop, Phil. At least until Leech is off the streets.”

But Phil was already shaking his head. “We can’t do that. Too many people need us.”

“Then I’ll keep going without you.”

“I’m not letting you go out there alone. Especially when I know you’re only doing it for me.”

“We won’t fight him, though,” Dan said. He could hear the desperation in his own voice. “Promise me we won’t go near him. Watching you die in a vision was bad enough. Promise me.”

“I promise,” Phil said. “I promise. I won’t stop everything we’re doing, but I don’t have a death wish. Facing him’s too risky, I can see that.”

Dan exhaled. He was still worried; so, so worried, but at least had got this much from Phil. “And if he seeks us out, you’ll run?”

“I’ll run,” Phil said, solemnly.

“Okay,” Dan said.

Phil opened his arms, and Dan walked into them, gratefully.

“It’s not going to come true,” Phil said, softly. “We’ll stop it, just like we stop all the other visions you have.”

Dan wasn’t sure why Phil was the one comforting him. He thought that it reassured Phil, taking care of others. He didn’t really know how to be the one to take care of Phil, yet. He supposed that he’d learn, in time. 

 _If they got time._ He could still see how Phil had looked, bloody and lifeless in his arms…

“I’m going to be Ok,” Phil said, thumb stroking against the back of his head. “It’s all going to be Ok.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, I wouldn't say this chapter is particularly violent, it's very comic-book style and no civilians die, but it DOES contain a bomb and it's set in Manchester. So, if you think reading that might upset you, thas okay, maybe skim-read the middle of this chapter.

Dan went to his classes the next week, at Phil’s insistence (“We can’t stop living our lives because of this. I’m in no danger when I’m not the Blizzard, and I promise I won’t even _touch_ the Blizzard suit when you’re not around.”)

He was getting coffee with Hazel, in a little café on campus following their seminar, when she suddenly cried out, and clapped a hand over her mouth.

“What?” Dan said, with some trepidation.

Hazel’s eyes were glued to her phone. “I just got an email- the marks for the presentation last week are up.”

Her thumbs darted across her phone screen as she opened the Uni website to view her grade. Dan did the same, albeit in a slower, and less enthusiastic manner. He figured the presentation had gone pretty well; he hadn’t mumbled or gone under-time.

He entered his password, clicked into the grade section, and froze.

40%.

The score hit him like a punch in the gut- and Dan knew all too well what a punch in the gut felt like.

He zoomed in on the little black number, as though that would somehow increase it (it didn’t) then scrolled down to the comments section. His tutor had only written two words- _Insufficient preparation_.

In all fairness, Dan thought, he had missed the lecture on the presentation topic. And he had written the speech the night before.

But it wasn’t like he had _ever_ sufficiently prepared for a Uni assignment; that’s what Dan did, he traded in minimum effort for passing grades. If coasting was no longer an option, he was going to have a serious problem.

 “How’d you do?” Hazel asked.

“Alright, yeah,” Dan said, sliding his phone into his pocket. “You?”

“78,” Hazel said. “Not as high as it could have been, but it’s an okay score, I guess.”

Dan fought and conquered the urge to say something incredibly rude to Hazel, taking a sip of his cooling coffee instead. He put the score out of his mind.

_What did grades matter, really?_ Leech was still out there; he had bigger things to be worrying about.  
  
***  
  
A few days later, around noon, Dan was standing in the shower, when another dull, blurry vision hit.  
  
_He looked around, absorbing what details he could make out. He was standing in the middle of a coffee shop. There was a mural across one wall. Dan focused on it, and saw that it was of a forest scene. The store was busy; there were several full tables, and a queue of three people in front of the counter. Dan was trying to guess what was about to go wrong, when Leech, wearing a grey hoodie and sunglasses entered the store and shouldered his way to the front of the queue._

_“Hey!” exclaimed the barrista, a girl in her twenties, who had her hair styled into two braids._

_In response, Leech aimed a gun at her head._

_The girl ducked, and Leech fired. The bullet missed her, shattering a jar of coffee beans above her head, as the girl ran into a back room. Leech whirled around. The other customers were already fleeing the store._

_He leaned over the counter, and casually emptied out the till. Pocketing the money, he smiled to himself, before slipping out of a side exit._  
  
***  
  
When Dan came to, the water was running cold. He turned it off, and yanked a towel around his waist, before stumbling out into the living room.

“Phil!” he called.

Phil came out of the bedroom. “Vision?”

“Leech.”

Phil paled. “You didn’t see me die again?”

“No, I saw him go into a coffee house with a gun. He didn’t hurt anyone,” Dan hurried to add, “- just traumatised a barista and robbed the place.”

“When?” Phil asked.

Dan shrugged helplessly. The Leech effect. “Today? Tomorrow?” Then, “You promised me you wouldn’t face him.”

Phil nodded. “And I won’t.”

“I could go-” Dan started to suggest.

 “Oh yeah, so he can kill you instead of me. Great idea, Dan,” Phil said, bitingly sarcastic.

There was a pause.

“So, what do we do?” Dan said. “Should we tip off the police?”

Phil chewed his lip. “The way it went in your vision, nobody got hurt. If we send the police there, things could escalate.”

“So we just have to let this happen,” Dan said slowly.

“Yeah,” Phil said, though he didn’t look happy about it.

“Ok,” Dan said. “Ok, I can do that.” He supposed that it wasn’t any different to what he’d been doing the year before Phil came along. But it was a full day before he could get the barrista’s face out of his head.

On Friday, Dan saw Leech enter a hair salon, and smash a hairdressers’ face into a mirror.

“We need to do something about this one,” Dan said, after relaying the vision to Phil. “His face was all torn up.”

They decided that Dan should call the police from a pay-phone, a few blocks from Phil’s flat, and warn the operator about what was going to happen, before hanging up. After making the call, Dan took a bus that went right past the salon, and saw that there was a police car parked across from it. Police presence was obviously enough to deter Leech, as Dan’s vision did not come to pass.

Saturday’s vision was much worse. Dan saw Leech shoot three customers in a corner store. Once again, he tipped off the police.

“Why is Leech doing this?” Phil demanded, when Dan returned.

“I think he’s baiting us,” Dan said, voicing a theory he had been cultivating for the past few days. “He’s after our powers. He knows I can see what he’s going to do. He’s hoping we’ll come to stop him.”

“Well, it hasn’t worked so far.”

“But he’s escalating,” Dan said grimly. “Our method of dealing with this isn’t sustainable. Any day now I could have a vision of something we can’t prevent. Or Leech could so something spontaneous, after we stop him going through with one of his original plans. He’s out there, with a gun, right now. Anything could happen.”

“I know,” Phil said. He was sitting at the foot of his bed, shoulders hunched. His face looked drawn.

Dan knew that there was no point pushing this conversation any further; there was nothing they could do, or rather, they had made their choice. The last thing he wanted was for Phil to change his mind.

With the creak of bedsprings, he sat next to him, placing a hand on Phil’s thigh, just above the knee. After a moment he felt Phil’s hand slide around his waist. Dan turned his face, and pressed a kiss to Phil’s shoulder, over the t-shirt. Phil made a soft, interested noise, and Dan leaned in further to nuzzle the side of his neck. Phil’s grip tightened around his waist, pulling Dan closer to him, fingers digging into his flesh. With his other hand, he guided Dan’s head up, and kissed him; the sort of wet, teasing kiss that only ever prefaced sex. Dan pushed Phil back onto the bed, and covering Phil’s body with his own, kissed him again.

After a few minutes Phil broke away, and looked up at him, something vulnerable in his eyes. “Can you-?”

It took Dan a second to understand what he was asking.

“ _Oh_ ,” he said. It wasn’t as though Dan had never topped Phil before, but it was the exception, rather than the rule. “Yes.” Then more emphatically. “Yes.”

They undressed, and Dan slowly eased Phil open with lube-slathered fingers. By the time he was done, Phil’s dick was flat against his stomach.

Dan pushed into Phil gently, pausing, part-way, to give him time to adjust.

“More, Dan,” Phil said, almost immediately, so Dan slid the rest of the way in. “Fuck,” Phil breathed.

The sound of Phil cursing, and the sight of him biting down on his bottom lip made Dan’s dick throb.

He started to thrust, moving slowly and pushing deep inside Phil.

He could feel Phil’s dick pressed between their bodies; the slip-slide of skin on skin felt delicious to Dan, he could only imagine how it felt to Phil.

Dan shifted slightly to achieve a change of angle, and was rewarded by a low punched out moan from Phil, as Dan hit his prostate.

Dan grinned at Phil’s obvious pleasure, and started to thrust faster, hitting the same spot, over and over. Phil grunted in time with every thrust of his hips.

Dan felt the heat start to pool inside him, but it was Phil who came first, shaking around him, a streak of cum splashing onto Dan’s stomach.

Abandoning all rhythm, Dan’s hips stuttered forward, once, twice, and then he was coming too, sagging into Phil as wave after wave of pleasure washed over him. Once the orgasm had subsided Dan rolled off him, but stayed close, lying on his side to look at Phil.

Dan loved Phil in profile; loved the curve of his nose and the sharp jut of his cheekbones.

He reached out to play with a strand of Phil’s fringe.

“God, I adore you,” he said, softly.

Phil cupped his chin, and kissed him sweetly, and that was more than enough of an answer.  
  
***  
  
The next morning, Dan went for a walk in the hope that it would help clear his head. Strolling through a local park, crisp grass beneath his feet and fresh air in his lungs, he was just thinking he should definitely do this more often, when a vision hit.

A blurry Leech vision.  
  
_He was in the middle of a crowd. People walked through him; he was powerless to stop them. There was something familiar about the bustle of the crowd, and the high arc of the roof…Dan realised he was standing in Manchester Piccadilly Station. Moments after this realisation, Dan heard the unmistakeable sound of gun-fire. There was an eruption of activity; people started screaming, shouting, running. More gunshots rang out. Dan could tell from the sounds that there were multiple shooters. He ran against the flow of the crowd, passing through fleeing bodies._

_Dan looked for the shooters, and spotted one; a bearded man in sunglasses, standing by a pillar. Not Leech._

_Dan was relieved to notice that the shooters were firing into the air; their goal seemed to be to make the crowd disperse. There were more than a dozen gun-men- and they were mainly men, all wearing tinted glasses to shield their identities. They were positioned strategically; spread throughout the train shed, behind pillars and gates- they were clearly anticipating return fire before long._

_Warnings blared over the station speakers. By this point, most the civilians were out of range, running for the station exits. Thankfully, the shooters didn’t appear to be following them._

_There was renewed shouting- a line of police had appeared, guns in hand. They opened fire, but the gunmen were too well-positioned. They didn’t land a shot. Dan watched in horror as the gunmen returned fire. This time they were aiming to kill. Dan saw at least ten officers fall, before the rest retreated._

_“Leech has stopped the train,” one of the shooters yelled. “Into the tunnel.”_

_Half of the shooters jumped onto the track beside Platform 6, and down the line, into a dark tunnel. They stopped just inside the mouth of the tunnel; only the bearded man pressed on. Dan followed him for at least two hundred metres, until he saw the far-off glow of a train._

_Even though he was non-corporeal and a collision couldn’t hurt him, Dan felt a prickle of fear at the sight, before he realised that the train wasn’t moving. He drew closer to the stationary train. The lights from inside illuminated the innards of the tunnel. It lent the scene a ghostly air._  
  
The train was packed with passengers.  Outside the train stood several people, including Leech. He was once again wearing a grey balaclava.

_The bearded man walked up to Leech. “The tunnel’s secured,” he reported._

_“Good,” Leech said. He gestured to the train. “The engine and doors are disabled. We’ll give them an hour. If they don’t come, we’ll blow the thing up.”_  
  
Dan came back to his body, and promptly fell to the ground.

“Shit!” he yelled, scrambling to his feet, and ignoring the scandalised gaze of a middle-aged woman, he raced back to the flat.

“PHIL!” Dan shouted, the moment he was through the door. “Phil, Leech has lost his fucking mind.”

It took a few minutes for him to calm down enough to relay what he had seen.

“What happens next? What happens to the hostages?” Phil demanded, when he had finished talking.

Dan shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s where the vision ended.” His next words were heavy. “I think I know why. Leech is doing all of this to draw us out. Whatever happens next depends on us.”

Phil swallowed audibly. “Do you know when the shooting’s going to start?”

Dan examined his feelings surrounding the vision. “It’s going to be today,” he said. “I don’t know what time- wait, no! The station was full of people. So, around rush hour.”

“That gives us…” Phil checked the time on his phone, with shaky hands. “Six hours. Max.” He looked down. “You said you saw Leech’s men butcher cops. Calling the police clearly won’t stop him this time. And if we warn anyone, counter-terrorism or something, we lose our only advantage; knowing how things are going to pan out.”

“You want to go,” Dan said.

Phil met his gaze. “Dan, we have to. You said at least ten officers get shot. And the hostages on that train, they’ll die if we don’t.”

“We have to,” Dan agreed. “I know we have to.” He took a breath. “I just…”

“I know,” Phil said, blue eyes still burning into Dan’s.

“We’ll go,” Dan said. “But before that we have six hours. Six hours to work out how to save everyone. Including ourselves.”  
  
***  
  
Dan stood in the lounge, looking out at the familiar view. It had just gone four, and he was dressed as the Night Terror, sans the mask.  Phil stepped out of the bedroom, wearing the metallic Blizzard suit Louise had made for him.

Dan blinked a few times, willing himself not to cry. He made one last, desperate bid. “Don’t come.”

Phil laughed, gently. “You need me. No offense, but you’re not that good in a fight, Dan.”

Dan managed a thin smile. “Hey,” he said. “Is that any way to talk to your hero?”

Without warning, Phil surged forward and kissed him. Everything about the kiss was urgent, aside from Phil’s hand, gentle as ever against his cheek.

Dan pulled back. “We should go,” he said, heading for the door.

Phil caught his arm. “Dan, wait. In case…well, just in case, I want you to know…”

“Phil, don’t.”

Phil didn’t back down. “You need to hear it. Unless….in the vision, did I get a chance to say goodbye?”

“It doesn’t matter what happened in the vision,” Dan said, hotly. “We’ve got a plan- the vision isn’t going to happen.”

“Did I get a chance?” Phil repeated.

Dan felt sick. “You got a chance,” he muttered, slipping on his mask and walking out the door.  
  
***  
  
They stood together in the shadows across the street from the station.

When the round of gunshots began, Phil turned to him.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

They set off, moving quickly. There was a crowd of people spilling out from the entrance; Phil cleaved a path through them with an icy breeze.

When they reached the ticket barrier inside the station, they vaulted over it. Panicked announcements played over the station speakers, just as they had in Dan’s vision.

They strode out onto Platform 6, and put their hands up.

“We surrender,” Dan declared, loudly. “Leech can have us.”

“We’ll cooperate. Our condition is you don’t hurt anyone,” Phil said.

Dan looked around to see who remained in the train-shed. To his relief, all of the civilians seemed to be gone.  The gunmen moved to surround them. Dan detected a hesitance in their movements- they were frightened of them, and didn’t want to come too close.

Three things happened then, in rapid succession; the police arrived at the entrance of the station, shouting warnings, Phil unleashed a roaring icy wind, knocking every shooter off their feet, and he and Dan dived off Platform 6, onto the track beside it.

“Sure the police will be fine without us?” Phil asked, as they pelted into the tunnel.

“The gunmen are out in the open,” Dan said. “They’re sitting ducks. If they know what’s good for them, they’ll surrender. Leech and the train are the priority.”  
  
After a few minutes they came to the train. Everything was as it had been in Dan’s vision; Leech had already stopped it. He stood flanked by five armed men.

“Leech, we’re here,” Dan said. “Just like you wanted. Let them go.”

“That trick’s not going to work twice,” Leech said. He jerked a thumb toward the station. “We know what happened out there.”

Dan hadn’t actually expected Leech to let the passengers go, but had figured it was worth a shot.

“Here’s what going to happen,” Leech said. “You two are going to let me take your powers. Then you’re going to let us cuff you. Then, and only then, will I release the passengers. If you resist in any way, I’ll blow up the train. So, have you made your decision?”

“We have,” Phil said. He made a sweeping motion with his hands, and Leech went flying backwards. They had planned this earlier, and their goal was simple; incapacitate Leech and his men before they had a chance to activate the bomb. One of the men came at Dan. Dan, while trying to deflect his attack, accidentally elbowed the man in the face. He had about three seconds to be pleasantly surprised before another man punched him in the stomach.

While Dan fought Leech’s men, Phil was fighting Leech. Out of the corner of his eye, Dan saw him strike Leech with a series of icy projectiles, knocking him down. Phil came over to help Dan, who was in trouble, surrounded by all three of Leech’s henchmen. Together they made short work of them.  
  
They both realised too late that Leech had got to his feet.

“I warned you,” Leech said. He was bleeding from the lip, and clutching a phone to his ear. “They’re resisting, detonate,” he said into the receiver.

“Leech, no!” Dan yelled. “You don’t need to do this.”

“Apparently I do,” he said. “And to think this could have all been resolved peacefully.”

Phil snarled, and pointed in Leech’s direction. An icy vapor flew from his fingertips, but Leech dodged it. The tunnel wall behind him frosted over. Phil aimed and missed a second time. Leech ran around them in the direction of the station. His men scrambled up off the floor and followed him, two of them leaving their guns where they lay on the ground. Phil didn’t stop them.

The people on the train looked frantic. Dan could see them trying the exits, but Leech had jammed them somehow. Dan wondered what Leech had told them, whether they knew about the bomb.

“How long do you think we have?” Phil asked.

“I don’t know!” Dan replied. “We need to find the bomb!”

He ran over to the tunnel wall, while Phil inspected the train.

“Over here!” Phil called. He was standing by the rear of the train, where a metal case was secured to the wall, at about chest-height.

Dan grabbed it, and attempted to wrench it from the wall. It didn’t budge an inch.

“I just tried that,” Phil said.

“Should we open it?” Dan asked. “Or will that set it off?”

“In the movies, opening the case doesn’t set the bomb off,” Phil said.

“We are so unqualified to do this,” Dan said, gingerly opening the case.

To his relief, the whole tunnel didn’t blow up. Inside the case was a mass of intersecting wires, and a timer which read 2:48, 2:47, 2:46…

“That’s not enough time for bomb disposal to get here,” Dan said.

“Maybe we can do it ourselves,” Phil said.“Yeah, that’s gonna work.”

Phil leaned in very close to the case, inspecting its contents. “Cut the red wire?” he suggested.

“Why the red wire?”

“I have a feeling.”

“We are not cutting anything because you have a fucking feeling.”

The timer hit two minutes. Dan felt his heart wrench. “Phil, if we can’t stop it, we should leave.”

“ _Unless_ ,” Phil said, “I can freeze the explosion.”

“Would that work?”

Phil considered, then nodded. “I think so, yeah. You should go back to the station, though, just in case.”

“Fat chance,” Dan said.

Phil didn’t push the point. The timer ticked down to one minute.

Phil rubbed his hands together, then placed one on either side of the bomb.

Dan took a few steps back. “I’ll just be over here, quietly shitting my pants.”

He had just realised that there was a very real chance those would be his last words, when the bomb exploded, with a deafening CRACK and a burst of brilliant blue light. A current of air knocked him back, pinning him against the tunnel wall. Dan looked to Phil. It was like looking at the sun; the bomb between his hands crackled with blue energy.

After what seemed like an age the bomb started to dim, before fading completely.

Phil let it go, panting.

Dan found himself able to move once more. He approached Phil. “You did it!”

Phil gave a feeble whoop.

“That was fucking amazing,” Dan told him. “Now, not to put any pressure on you, but have you got any idea how to get the people off the train?”

Phil held up a finger. _Give me a sec_.

Once Phil had recovered he formed a make-shift crow-bar out of ice. They took turns trying to jemmy the doors open.

“You and me….really…don’t have much in the way of arm-strength,” Dan said, giving up and sagging against the door.

“Speak for yourself, I have incredible biceps.”

“There must be a way of doing this with our heads,” Dan mused. “If we could get the mechanism back in operation…shit.”

Leech and his men were striding down the tunnel toward them.

“Well, I didn’t see that coming,” Leech drawled. “But never mind. I have a contingency plan. You might be wondering where my allies came from.”

Dan actually had been wondering, but he wasn’t about to encourage Leech by admitting it.

“The short answer is, you. These are people you’ve hurt, humiliated, even.”

“So…criminals,” Phil interrupted.

“If you must put it like that, yes. My point is, they’re your enemies. They’ll do anything to beat you. Anything I ask.” He turned to his men. “Open to the doors to the train, and shoot everyone inside,” he commanded.

The man on Leech’s right hand side raised his gun. Dan felt Phil stiffen by his side, ready to intervene…but before he could the man dropped the gun on the ground.

“No,” he said. He had lost his dark glasses; Dan suddenly recognised him as the man he had seen strike Phil with lead piping in his vision a month before.

“What?” Leech demanded.

“I won’t do it.”

“This is just the same as killing them with a bomb!” Leech exclaimed.

“This is different…or, even if it isn’t…no.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Leech said, “what you think. There are still people willing to-”

But the other men beside him were also shaking their heads. One walked over to the driver’s door, and forced it open. He climbed into the compartment, and a moment later the rest of the doors snapped open. Passengers started to spill out, helping each other down onto the tracks, running past them in the direction of the station. Leech’s men left with them.

Leech eyed the retreating crowd. “Do I have to do everything myself?” he said, raising his gun.

Phil lunged forward and knocked the gun out of Leech’s hand. But the move placed him firmly within Leech’s reach; with a snarl of triumph Leech seized his exposed wrist.

_Fuck._

Leech released Phil, who stumbled back toward Dan. Leech was looking at his hands, entranced. This was their chance. “We need to get away, now,” Dan hissed in Phil’s ear, but Phil seemed dazed, and not in a state to run anywhere. Dan remembered how unpleasant it had been to have his own power robbed.  
  
He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but he thought he could see an icy mist forming around Leech’s hands.

“He took my powers,” Phil said, softly.

“Yes, and without them we’ve got no way of facing him, so we need to get out of here,” Dan said, urgently. The tunnel was definitely getting cold now. It was the first time in a long time that he hadn’t found the cold comforting. “Can you run?”

Before Phil could answer, a gust of wind ripped them apart, smacking Phil into one wall, and Dan another. Dan slid down the wall, but managed to land on his feet. Phil landed face-down, and hard.

Leech walked over to them.

“At first your power was hard to understand, but I’m a fast learner,” he said, to Phil. “My friends told me about all the things you can do- the gales, the weapons, the projectiles. All very fascinating.”

Leech summoned another wind; this time it only hit Phil, slamming him back against the wall. He cried out in pain.

Dan knew that physically attacking Leech was pointless; he hadn’t stood a chance against him even before Leech had Phil’s powers. His best approach was to use his words.

“Give it up, Leech,” he said, scathingly. “You’ve lost your lackeys. Most of them were rounded up, the rest abandoned you. Any minute now, the police will be down here to arrest you. There’s no way you’re making it out of here.”

Leech smiled, darkly. “Oh, with his power, I think I can. And I’m taking you with me.” This was directed at Dan. “Don’t get me wrong, the Blizzard’s power is intriguing, but he’d be impossible to contain. And your power will prove very, very useful to me.” He turned back to Phil. “Of course, that means I have to dispose of you.”  
  
Phil splayed his fingers in Leech’s direction, which, of course, achieved absolutely nothing. Leech launched him into the tunnel wall a third time.  
  
_Fuck it._ Dan charged at Leech. Leech struck him once in the face, and once in the stomach, before kicking him to the ground. Dan’s back collided painfully with the railway track. Beneath his mask, hot blood gushed into his mouth. His ears were ringing; he felt like he was going to pass out.  
  
“Anyway,” Leech said to Phil, as though he’d done nothing more strenuous than take a phone-call, “There’s something I’ve been dying to try.”  
  
He shoved Phil against the tunnel wall and placed a hand in the middle of his chest. A layer of ice spread out from Leech’s hand and across Phil’s skin, rapidly growing thicker and thicker.  
  
Phil squirmed, and then went still as the ice trapped him in place.  
  
Dan knew that when Phil froze people in ice he only used a thin layer, so it would melt quickly and not cause the victim any lasting damage. But Leech was taking it too far; the ice already looked an inch thick.

“Leech,” Dan rasped. “You’ll kill him.”

“What a terrible outcome that would be,” Leech said. He didn’t stop.

“Leech,” Dan yelled, “Please.”

He forced himself to stand up, nearly pitching over into the track. “Please,” he babbled, “I’ll come with you, just let him go, I don’t care, just let him go.”

Behind the ice Phil was barely visible. How long could he survive in those conditions? Ten minutes? Five?

“ _Please, please stop_.”

Leech turned away from Phil, and marched over to Dan, who felt a jolt of hope.

“For the love of God,” Leech said, “Would you shut up.”

He placed two fingers to Dan’s head, and with a rush of cold, the world went away.

***

Dan came to lying flat on his back in an alley-way, something he had never done before.

Leech had been busy; icicles protruded from the ground and walls, rendering both ends of the alley impassable.

“Oh, good, you’re awake.” Leech was standing over him. “Get up, we need to move.”

Dan swallowed. “Did you let him go?”

Leech snorted. “Of course not.”

Dan closed his eyes.

He heard Leech crouch down beside him, and felt a gun nudge the side of his neck. “I said, get up.” Dully, Dan did as he was told.

“Move!” Leech commanded. This time Dan didn’t obey.

Leech shoved him. Dan exaggerated the resulting stagger; crashing into the alley wall, and catching himself on an icicle.

“Who would have thought the Night Terror was so weak?” Leech sneered. He had come up close behind Dan now, Dan could feel his breath on the back of his neck. His voice dripped with contempt. “What was he to you, anyway? Friend? Brother? _Lover_?”

Dan snapped off the icicle in his hand, and with all the strength he had, drove it deep into Leech’s stomach.

Leech’s eyes widened in surprise. His gun clattered to the ground. Dan yanked the icicle out. It was slick with blood. He tossed it aside. Leech lurched forward, clutching at the front of Dan’s suit. Dan peeled off his fingers, and ran past him, in what he hoped was the direction of the station.

When he reached the end of the alley-way, his heart sank. Icicles criss-crossed the exit, forming an unbreakable blockade. Dan couldn’t even see through it. He was about to give up hope when a loud noise started up, from out on the street, and the icicles started to melt before his eyes. Within a minute they were gone, revealing a police car, mounted with a water cannon.

Dan wasted no time, dashing past the car, and into the station. The police, quite wisely, didn’t stop him. He ran across the station, passing more police in the process, dropped onto the track by Platform 6, and headed into the tunnel.  
  
Phil was lying on his back by the tunnel wall, near to the train. The ice that had surrounded him was largely gone, though some still clung to his chest, and one arm, pinning it to his side. His eyes were closed. Even in the ill-lit tunnel, Dan could tell that his skin was blue.  
  
“Shit,” Dan said, dropping to his knees beside him. _The vision’s coming true_ , he thought to himself, in a panic.

“Hey,” he said, cupping Phil’s face. “Hey, it’s me. Can you hear me?”

Phil’s eyes flickered open.

_Alive._

Dan scraped away the ice at his chest, and worked at freeing his arm.

“I can…do that,” Phil said. He screwed up his face for a moment, and the ice around his arm cracked and fell away.

“Your powers are back!” Dan said in surprise.

“Not entirely,” Phil said, faintly. The brief effort seemed to have exhausted him. “Where’s Leech?”

“Dead,” Dan said.

“The police?”

“No…uh…me.”

Phil started to say something, but Dan cut him off.

“We should get out of here.”

He helped Phil to his feet. He was almost too cold to touch. Dan looped an arm around him, and together they started to walk. By the time they had reached the end of the tunnel, Dan was supporting the lion’s share of Phil’s weight.

Blinking, Dan stepped into the light. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a group of black-clad officials, only a few feet away. He stiffened. If they decided to arrest them, at this juncture, there was nothing he and Phil could do about it.

One of the officers took a few steps toward them. “Hey,” she said. “He doesn’t look so good. Do you need help?”

Dan stared, uncomprehending.

“We know what you two did, stopping the bomb,” said another officer, behind her. “We’re not going to take you in, legislation be damned.”

“At least let us get him up onto the platform,” the first officer offered.

Dan had to concede that he had no way of achieving that by himself. But he was loath to accept the officer’s help. _Could it all be a trick, an easy way to arrest them both?_ He looked to Phil, and Phil gave a slight nod. Full of misgivings, Dan let the officers lift Phil up onto the platform, before scrambling up himself.

“Thanks,” Dan said, when it became evident that neither of them had been cuffed.

“You never saw us, we never saw you,” the first officer said. Dan nodded, then turned his attention to Phil, who had got to his feet by himself.

“You ready to make our dramatic getaway?” Dan asked.

“Just gimme a sec,” Phil replied.  He was less blue than he had been a few minutes before, but still looked absolutely dreadful.

Dan looked around the station. He saw what he hadn’t on his mad dash to save Phil. A considerable amount of the station was frosted over with ice, and several police officers were sprawled unconscious on the ground, all relics of Leech’s escape.

“I’m lucky,” Phil said. “That my powers started coming back when they did. And that you found me.”

“When I saw you, I thought I might have been too late,” Dan admitted, in a hushed voice, aware of the police officers nearby. “That the vision had come true.”

There was a sudden commotion at the other side of the station. Dan whirled around to see Leech standing on the platform next to theirs, one hand clutching his stomach, the other a gun.

Dan realised two things in rapid succession; that his vision hadn’t taken place in a tunnel, but in the bright white of the station, and that in it, Phil hadn’t frozen to death, he had been _shot_.

Dan saw Leech aim at him, then change his target to Phil.

He’d had a week to dwell on this moment, to plan, but now that it had come there was only one thing Dan could do.

By the time Leech fired, he was already moving, stepping in front of Phil.

Two bullets struck him in the torso, knocking him backward. He fell, air rushing in his ears, arms caught him, lowered him to the ground. People were shouting…Phil, Phil was shouting, and then everything went black.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was definitely the hardest chapter to write- action scenes, AND a smut scene that I intended to be tasteful and understated but kinda veered into hardcore :P  
> 


	5. Chapter 5

Dan woke up in an ugly beige room.

 _Not again_ , he thought, before he drifted away into unconsciousness.

It wasn’t until he came to for the second time, that it dawned on him that he was not, in fact, in his childhood bedroom.

A closer look revealed that he was in a private hospital room, and that he wasn’t alone; Louise was sat in a chair by the wall, flipping through a magazine.

“Louise,” Dan said, voice hoarse from lack of use.

Louise dropped her magazine. “You’re awake!” she exclaimed, so loudly he winced.

“Apparently,” he said.

Louise leaned forward to pick up the magazine, then aborted the gesture. “Should I, should I get a nurse?”

“Fill me in first,” Dan said. “Please.”

“Of course,” Louise said.

“Where’s-”

“Phil?” Louise said.

Dan stared at her in shock.

Louise laughed. “He told me his name, love. And he’s currently asleep in my car. You’ve been out for three days.”

Dan processed this. His brain seemed to be operating at about half its usual speed.

“How am I doing?” He became of bandages, heavy and scratchy against his skin.

“You were very lucky,” Louise said. “The bullets struck you on the right side, a little below the chest. One didn’t do much more than graze you. The other got lodged, though, a surgeon had to take it out.”

“Right,” Dan said. “It doesn’t hurt too much.”

“You’re on a mad amount of painkillers,” Louise informed him.

“Sweet,” Dan said. That would explain the grogginess. “And Leech?”

“Dead,” Louise said. “Really dead this time. The police gunned him down after he shot you. But he was dying anyway. He’d lost a lot of blood.”

“I thought I’d killed him,” Dan said. Something had been nagging at him for the last few minutes, and he suddenly realised what it was; his face was bare. “My mask…”

“Phil’s got it,” Louise said. “And the rest of your suit, though that’s ruined.” Louise sounded just the tiniest bit reproachful. “They had to take the mask off, to operate on you,” she continued. “But the hospital’s on your side. They’ve barred the press and the police from entering. Not that the police have tried. They know how bad arresting you would look.”

 _The press._ Dan groaned. “Did it make the news?”

Louise’s eyes went wide. “ _Oh_ yes. That’s how I found out you’d been shot. There was footage of you being carried into the ambulance; you were still masked, at that point. I called you, over and over, and eventually Phil picked up, and told me where you were.” She stood. “I’m going to get a nurse, to check over you, and then I’m going to go get Phil.”

The nurse that Louise fetched seemed slightly in awe of him, at least until he managed to dribble the water she gave him down his front, at which point she started to treat him like a normal human being.  
Phil managed to collide with the nurse in the doorway as she was leaving.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t see-” he blurted. The nurse assured him that it wasn’t a problem and left, no doubt with her previous conception of superheroes in tatters.

 

Phil met Dan’s eyes and just stared. He looked utterly relieved, and completely fond, and so, so tired. Dan felt a lump rise in his throat. He never would have believed he’d have someone who cared about him this much.

Louise had come in behind Phil; she cleared her throat loudly. “Well, I’ll be going. Call me the next time you get shot. I would say don’t do it again, but it seems to be a habit for you.”

“It’s only happened twice,” Dan protested.

“Technically three times,” said Phil, the traitor.

Louise smirked. “I’ll look into making your next suit bullet-proof.”

Dan wasn’t sure if she was joking, but decided to respond as though she were serious. “If you could do that, that would be really helpful.”

Louise waved at the pair of them, and started to leave.

“Louise,” Dan said, just before she left the room. “Thanks. And…er…my name is Dan. Dan Howell.”

He knew that Louise understood exactly what it meant for him to tell her that, though all she did was nod and smile. “See you round, boys.” She closed the door behind her.

 

Phil dragged the chair she had sat in over to Dan’s bed.

“How do you feel?” he said.

“Surprisingly good,” Dan said. “A bit spacey from the painkillers. The nurse said I’ll be useless for at least two weeks, so you might have to clean the flat yourself, for once.”

Phil didn’t rise to the bait, which, along with his furrowed brow, told Dan that something was wrong. “I’m sorry,” he said, in a low voice, before Dan had to ask.

“I…Phil, why are you sorry? You know none of this is your fault.”

Phil’s eyes were trained on the edge of Dan’s blanket. “Leech was aiming for me. And it’s my fault we were even on the platform. You wanted to go, but I said I needed time to recover-”

Dan got the sense that this was a line of thought Phil had revisited frequently over the last few days.

He thought it best to interrupt him. “And you did need to recover! Leech had just done his damn best to freeze you to death. Incidentally, he’s also to blame for me getting shot, not you, since _he was the one who shot me_.”

While Dan was talking, Phil’s mouth formed an unhappy line. “I was so… scared,” he said. “When I saw you go down. There was blood everywhere, on you, on the floor, on me. And then there were paramedics and doctors and surgeons, and I couldn’t get close to you, and all night long nobody knew if you were going to be okay.”

Phil’s voice had gone very unsteady; Dan felt a rush of alarm. He had never seen Phil cry.

“Phil, Phil, but I am okay,” he said. He wished he could hug him, but settled for easing his left arm out from under the covers and taking his hand, stroking back and forth between his thumb and index finger.

Phil blinked rapidly. He looked a mess. Someone had obviously brought him clothes from home, because he was wearing a hoodie and jeans, but they were crumpled, and there were purple shadows under his eyes. “Had you had a vision? Did you know you’d survive?”

Dan shook his head.

“You idiot,” Phil said.

Dan went to shrug, then thought better of it. Knowing his luck, he’d tear open his stitches, and become the first person to die from shrugging. “I just love you,” he said.

“Idiot,” Phil said, again, lifting Dan’s hand, and kissing it.

 

“So,” Dan said. “What are the press saying?”

Phil frowned. “We don’t have to get into it now. You should probably rest.”

“I’ve been resting for three days, Phil. Lay it on me.”

“They found out who Leech was,” Phil said, opening a web-page on his phone, and passing it to Dan. His battery was running dangerously low.

On the screen was a picture of an unremarkable-looking man in his late thirties, with a thin face and grey eyes. “Matthew Spencer,” Dan read, passing the phone back. The name meant nothing to him.

“He used to work for the police, for a special anti-power team, if you’ll believe it.”

“That explains why he was so hard to beat,” Dan said. “What else do we know about him?”

“The police issued a statement. No one he worked with knew about his power. But several of his colleagues said he had a fixation with catching the Night Terror.”  
“Because he wanted my power?” Dan suggested.

“Most likely,” Phil said. “He might have been jealous. There you were, a cult hero, using your power to make a difference, and there he was, anonymous.”

“He wanted to make me hurt, in the end,” Dan said. “That’s why he aimed at you, instead of me.”

Phil’s mouth dropped open. “ _Dan_ ,” he said.

“What?” Dan said, making his eyes and wide as possible. “I was under the impression the feeling was mutual.”

“It is,” Phil said. “It’s just…”

“A lot,” Dan finished. And it was; Dan had lived a small lifetime closed-off and alone. And now he had Phil; Phil, who had lowered Dan’s boundaries, permanently, who made him feel comfortable, and wanted, and brave, all at the same time. Phil, who had gotten so intertwined with Dan’s concept of happiness that Dan wasn’t sure happiness existed without him, anymore.

“Yeah,” Phil said and Dan wondered if a similar series of thoughts had played out in his mind.

“You’re going to have to come down here and kiss me, because I really can’t move.” Phil shifted, so he was sitting on the side of Dan’s bed, and leaned over to kiss him. His mouth tasted of stale coffee, but Dan’s heart fluttered all the same.

Phil sat back up, but remained perched on the edge of the bed, the side of his body pressing against Dan’s hip through the blanket. Dan found the contact reassuring.  
  
“I can’t believe it’s over,” Dan breathed. “I can’t believe we’re both Ok…”

Phil side-eyed him.

“I can’t believe you’re Ok, and I’m on the road to being Ok,” he amended. “Leech tried so hard to destroy us, but we survived him. We don’t have to worry anymore.”

“Dan,” Phil said. “I was thinking. We don’t have to keep doing this. We’ve risked so much already, and helped so many people. I’d be happy to stop, if that’s what you wanted.”

Two months ago, Dan would have leapt on this offer. But now…

“I don’t want to,” he said. “I mean, obviously I’m going to need a break to heal up, but, once I’m better, I want to get back to superhero-ing. I feel so guilty ignoring my visions, and…this is mortifying to admit, but I like helping people. I don’t just do it for you.”

There was a beat while Phil waited to see if Dan was finished, before he said, “I know.”

“You know!” Dan repeated, stunned.

“‘Course I know,” Phil said, eyes playful. “But I still meant it, I would have quit if you said you wanted to.” He grinned. “I’m glad we’re not, though. I did a _lot_ of thinking while you were out,” he continued. “And I think I understand your power, now.”

“Do share,” Dan said.

“I’m pretty sure you only see the disasters that you’re able to prevent. Think about it, all of your visions take place near you, and you don’t see people dying of illness, or anything like that.”

“That…actually makes a lot of sense,” Dan said, slowly.

“And it would explain why you’re getting more visions now; your capacity to help people is increasing.”

“Huh,” Dan said. “So, my visions aren’t a curse. They’re…”

“A tool, to help you help people.”

That was Phil, Dan thought. He took the problems Dan had been grappling with for years and straightened them out to reveal that they weren’t so complicated, or scary, after all.  
  
They kept talking for a few minutes, over the course of which it became apparent just how incredibly tired Phil was.

“Go to bed, Phil,” Dan said, after witnessing him forget the word “orange”.

“Nah, I’m good,” Phil said, stubborn as ever.

“I’m getting tired again,” Dan said, an exaggeration, but not a total lie. “So they’ll be nothing for you to do here anyway. Go home and get some sleep. And by some, I mean at least eight hours. You need it.”

“Alright,” Phil agreed.

“But then, come back and keep me company. Oh, and see if you can sneak me in Mcdonald’s. Hospital food is the worst.”

 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But wait, there's more...


	6. Epilogue

It took Dan almost two weeks to recover enough to go back to Uni.

Louise helped him forge a medical certificate claiming he had suffered from appendicitis, and, amazingly, it worked.

His friends accepted the lie without question, and the Uni even agreed to push his Semester 2 exams back by a fortnight to give him time to catch up. Time that Dan desperately needed; he didn’t even have a good grasp on the material from the start of Semester. But even with the threat of having to repeat his units hanging over his head, Dan could barely force himself to do anything. Phil noticed, of course Phil noticed, but he didn’t say anything, aside from quietly suggesting that Dan take a break when he started gnawing on his pencil, or muttering to himself, advice that sometimes Dan took, and sometimes he didn’t.

On the day of the business law revision lecture, Dan trudged in a few minutes after the lecture started and took a seat near the back of the room. He was getting out his laptop when someone, quite rudely, took the seat next to him.

Dan bit back a sigh of annoyance. The back of the lecture theatre was pretty empty, couldn’t the person at least have left a buffer seat… He looked to see who it was, and came face-to-face with Phil.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed.

“Learning about business law,” Phil deadpanned.

“You don’t even go here,” Dan said, realising a second later that he had unintentionally quoted Mean Girls.

Phil snickered.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said, more seriously.

“Couldn’t you have talked to me before I left? Or waited ‘til I was back?”

“I figured this was the place for it.”

They were starting to draw looks. Not fancying being scolded by the lecturer, Dan grabbed Phil’s shoulder, and marched him out the back door.

“Ok, say your piece,” Dan said, once they were outside.

“I think you should quit law,” Phil said.

Dan was so shocked, he actually took a step back. “What? Phil, I can’t.”

Phil crossed his arms. “Why not?”

“Because I’ve already done two years, and I’m going to need a good job someday, for, you know, financial security, and my parents will be so disappointed if I drop out,” Dan said, reciting the list he told himself almost every night.

“But you’re not happy,” Phil said, as though that mattered more than all the reasons Dan had given. “You hate law, so you don’t study, and then you get stressed out, and start blaming yourself, and you don’t sleep.”

Dan couldn’t deny any of this. “That’s just ‘cause I hate _studying_ law,” he argued. “I probably won’t hate actually being a lawyer.”

Phil was sceptical. “Do you actually believe that?”

“I…no,” Dan admitted.

Phil lightly touched his arm. “You don’t have to doom yourself to a life you don’t want, Dan. No one should have to do that.”

“But what else can I do?” Dan exclaimed. “I can’t just drop out without a plan!”

“Then make a plan! If you want to stay at Uni, find something else to study. Something that will actually make you happy- theatre, or literature, or media. And if you don’t want to keep studying, drop-out. Do what I do, make videos.”

The thing was, Dan had fantasised about doing this multiple times over the last few months.

“Do you think I could?”

Phil looked relieved that he was making head-way. “Of course you could! The two videos on my channel you’re in are in my top-five most-viewed, and you’ve been helping out for months now with filming and ideas. If you started your own channel it would take off, I’m sure of it.”

It sounded good, too good, it sounded like a dream.

“Let’s face it, Dan, you can’t keep going like this; exams are coming up soon, and I know you’re not ready.”

Defensiveness flared up inside of him. “I can pass,” he said, heatedly.

“Maybe.” Dan got the sense that Phil was only saying that to avoid a fight. “But even if you don’t have to repeat anything, imagine the toll another year would have on you.”

“I suppose…” Dan said, mulling it over, “I don’t have to drop out for good. I could defer, try making some videos, and see how it goes.”

Phil nodded, carefully.

“Wait!” Dan said, suddenly realising a problem. “Phil, where will I live? If I defer my course, I can’t keep staying in Halls.”

Phil looked at him as though he was incredibly dense. “With me, of course.”

Dan managed to choke on air. “Are you asking me to move in?”

“I don’t know why you’re surprised,” Phil said, bravado not-quite masking shyness. “You practically already live with me anyway. But if you move in officially, it won’t just be my space anymore, you know? It’ll be yours too. We can find a bigger flat, and you can set up all your stuff, and we can fall asleep together every night and have three hour breakfasts whenever we want.” Phil had gone slightly flushed.

“That sounds…great,” Dan said. "So great."

“You'll do it, then? You’ll defer?”

“I want to…to call my parents. To check they’re not going to disown me, or anything. But, yeah. I’ll do it.”

Phil let out a Mario-esque whoop.

“I don’t know you,” Dan said, rolling his eyes.

***

Hazel didn’t take the news that Dan was deferring well, giving him a blistering lecture about perseverance before storming away in a huff. However, three days later, she came by while Dan was packing up his dorm-room.  
  
“Sorry,” she said, shortly. “Honestly, it’s probably best that you do leave- law clearly wasn’t working out for you. I shouldn’t have got so mad. I’m just going to miss you, Howell.”

“Ah,” Dan said. “I’m going to miss you too.”

After an only slightly awkward hug, and the solemn promise that they would stay in touch, Hazel left, and Dan took a box of his belongings out to Phil, who had just arrived in a borrowed car.

Phil was leaning against the side of the car, wearing shades. He greeted Dan by taking the box out of his hands, and, in the same motion, swiftly kissing him on the tip of the nose.

“You’re carrying all the heavy stuff,” Dan informed him. “Doctor’s orders.”

Phil hummed his agreement, loading the box into the boot of the car.

“How was the drive over?” Dan inquired.

“Good.” Phil emerged from the boot. “Terrifying,” he admitted. “Turns out the people behind you don’t react well when you drive twenty miles under the speed limit through the town centre. Or when you signal the wrong way.”

“We’re actually going to die,” Dan groaned.

Phil shut the boot and locked the car. “You all done packing?”

Dan made a non-committal sound. They started back toward his dorm.

Dan put his hands in his pockets. “Thanks,” he said.

“I never offered to help you pack. Maybe I’ll just lie on your bed and heckle you. Who knows?”

“I mean, for talking to me. Making me realise that law wasn’t such a great idea. I mean, I already knew it, in my heart, but… thanks for giving me the push.”

Phil shot him a smile. “I just thought, maybe it was time someone saved you for a change.”

“Urgh, you’re so cheesy,” Dan said, words belied by the warmth spreading through his chest.

Phil wrinkled his nose. “Don’t say cheesy.”

“Cheesy,” Dan said immediately. “Cheesy, cheesy, cheesy. Cheese.”

Phil clamped his hands over his ears. Dan prised them off.

“Cheddar, camembert, _brie_ -”

Phil started to run. For a moment, Dan just stood, watching him, the feeling of future hanging in the air. Then, he gave chase.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaand we're done :)  
> If you liked, do the nice things. I had a lot of fun writing it, even though I got really nervous posting.  
> 


End file.
